NYPL Blogs: Africa and the African Diaspora/node/142511
enSchomburg Treasures: The StoryCorps Black LGBTQ Archivehttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/06/10/storycorps-black-lgbtq-archive
K Menick, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<figure class="caption caption caption" style="float:right"><img alt="StoryCorps participants" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/storycorps_1.jpg" /><figcaption>StoryCorps participants</figcaption></figure><p>It's easy for the digital world to seem isolating. Standing, sitting, walking, driving, we're surrounded by faces looking down at their cellphones. Real human connection—and people paying attention to where they're going—are rare. But we have a choice: be distracted, or be <a href="http://www.itgetsbetter.org/" rel="nofollow">enriched</a>, <a href="http://www.radiotopia.fm/" rel="nofollow">enlightened</a>, <a href="https://instagram.com/humansofny/" rel="nofollow">engaged</a>.</p>
<p>If you're familiar with StoryCorps, odds are it's through NPR, which broadcasts <a href="http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510200/storycorps" rel="nofollow">selected pieces</a> every week. (Short segments that turn, inevitably, into my Friday morning cry.) Since 2003, they've recorded over 60,000 interviews, going strong on <a href="http://storycorps.org/about/" rel="nofollow">their mission</a> "to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives."</p>
<p>All StoryCorps interviews are archived at the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/folklife/" rel="nofollow">American Folklife Center</a>, and we are pleased to announce that the <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b20534688~S1">Black LGBTQ Archive</a> is now available for researchers at the <a href="http://schomburgcenter.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">Schomburg Center</a>, in the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/divisions/manuscripts-archives-and-rare-books-division">Manuscripts, Archives, &amp; Rare Books Division</a>. Tamara Thompson, Archivist at StoryCorps, describes how the collection came to be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We mined the StoryCorps archive and pulled over 200 stories that reflect a multitude of black LGBTQ experiences to add to the Schomburg's <a href="http://storycorps.org/in-the-life-archive-with-schomburg-and-storycorps/" rel="nofollow">In The Life Archive</a>. The StoryCorps interviews <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b20476220~S1">complement</a> <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b20607632~S1">the</a> <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b11660951~S1">existing</a> <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b18802237~S1">holdings</a> of the In the Life Archive, and work in conjunction with these materials to continue conversations on race and identity. Some recurring themes in the collection include: love, relationships, activism, coming out, and achieving self-acceptance. As we collect more stories from black LGBTQ participants through our <a href="http://storycorps.org/outloud/" rel="nofollow">OutLoud</a> and <a href="http://storycorps.org/griot/" rel="nofollow">Griot</a> initiatives, we will continue to contribute additional interviews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MARB Assistant Curator, Steven G. Fullwood, continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These amazing interviews are informative and entertaining, and complicate mainstream beliefs about black non-heterosexual life in the U.S. Much of what exists in archives are the papers of individuals who have passed on, or organizations that no longer exist; one of the great things about this collection is that it showcases contemporary black LGBTQ voices, offering listeners a window into an array of writers, performing artists, intellectuals, and scholars—and everyday people, sharing their unique experiences.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>"<a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b20491079~S1">Plenty of creatures are intelligent but only one tells stories</a>." If that's true, and we are more properly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld_II:_The_Globe" rel="nofollow">pan narrans</a> than homo sapiens, the most human thing we can do is to take a moment and listen to one another. The internet is full of people talking, but connection and real understanding—those come only from listening. Thanks, StoryCorps, for reminding us.</p>
Oral historyhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/06/10/storycorps-black-lgbtq-archive#commentsWed, 10 Jun 2015 13:17:21 -0400Schomburg Treasures: The Menu Collectionhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/10/schomburg-menu-collection
K Menick, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<div class="digcol-image align-left align-left inline inline">
<figure class="caption caption caption digcol-image"><a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/http://images.nypl.org/index.php?t=w&amp;id=5194382"><img alt="The Tree Houses" src="http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=5194382&amp;t=w" width="300px" /></a>
<figcaption class="digcol-caption">The Tree Houses, 1964-65</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>How much did a plate of chop suey cost at the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f770d400-6212-0132-0cb2-58d385a7bbd0">Cotton Club</a>?</p>
<p>What did the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/node/61974">Buffalo Soldiers</a> have for <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/36659310-6212-0132-4ab9-58d385a7bbd0">Christmas dinner in 1920</a>?</p>
<p>At the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/2f073960-621a-0132-226a-58d385a7b928">African Pavilion</a> of the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/new-york-worlds-fair-1964-1965-corporation-records#/?tab=navigation">1964-65 New York World's Fair</a>, was the Lobster Tail Malagasy served in The Tree House of Calabash or the Tree House of Fetishes?</p>
<p>...Find the answers in the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/schomburg-menu-collection#/?tab=about">Schomburg Center's Menu Collection, now online</a>. </p>
<p>The Schomburg Menu Collection is a diverse one, with menus from both <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/27f046c0-6220-0132-2948-58d385a7bbd0">restaurants</a> and <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/1dedc9d0-621b-0132-8e80-58d385a7b928">private dinner parties</a>, <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6ac23cf0-6214-0132-805f-58d385a7bbd0">souvenir photo covers</a>, and <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/1047fe70-6220-0132-36a8-58d385a7bbd0">floor plans</a>. Browse through and find: an invitation to a dinner given by the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a1a919c0-6213-0132-e1fe-58d385a7bbd0">American Minister in Monrovia, Liberia</a>; programs for the <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ac611a60-6214-0132-8118-58d385a7bbd0">National Association of Negro Musicians Grand Ball</a>; an essay on "<a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/e5765430-621a-0132-9b7c-58d385a7b928#/?uuid=e5aac570-621a-0132-9e44-58d385a7b928">The Origins of Soul Food</a>"; menus for everything from <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a10ddb00-6218-0132-c0ff-58d385a7b928#/?uuid=a10ddb00-6218-0132-c0ff-58d385a7b928">New Orleans classics</a> to <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/00e4ccb0-6220-0132-525e-58d385a7bbd0#/?uuid=00e4ccb0-6220-0132-525e-58d385a7bbd0">jazz clubs</a> to <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6233e200-621c-0132-929b-58d385a7b928#/?uuid=6233e200-621c-0132-929b-58d385a7b928">African airlines</a>... and much more.</p>
Foodhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/10/schomburg-menu-collection#commentsFri, 10 Apr 2015 16:00:24 -0400Remembering the Women of Slaveryhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/03/27/remembering-women-slavery
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><img alt="Women and Slavery" height="150" width="150" style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/2015main_0.jpg" />Since my graduate school days in Paris, I have been researching and writing and talking about the slave trade and slavery. On March 25, I had the honor of doing the latter during the International Day of Rememberance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. </p>
<p>I gave the <a href="http://webtv.un.org/watch/international-day-of-remembrance-of-the-victims-of-slavery-and-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-general-assembly-83rd-plenary-meeting/4136261496001" rel="nofollow">keynote address on Women and Slavery to the UN General Assembly</a>.</p>
<p>Here's what I wanted people to know and remember:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a great honor to be here today among you as we commemorate the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade whose memory has been so movingly captured and rendered by architect Rodney Leon. This year’s theme, “Women and Slavery,” comes fittingly on the heels of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. This theme reminds us that no history, no present and no future can be written without recognizing the vital role of women that, unfortunately, is too often obscured, glossed over, forgotten, or even denied.</p>
<p>So I am particularly pleased to be helping to break the silence that surrounds the women who were not simply the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, but were also immense contributors to the creation of a new world. But, first, let us remember that between the early 1500s and 1867 as many captives crossed the Atlantic as were forced out of Africa by all the other slave trades combined from 500 CE to 1900. The transatlantic slave trade was the most massive forced migration in history.</p>
<p>As a result, from 1492 to 1820, 80 percent of the people who arrived in the Americas were Africans, only 20 percent were Europeans. Africans landed in every country, from Argentina to Bolivia, from every Caribbean Island to Honduras and North America. The Africans’ skills, knowledge, and work transformed the land. They mined and cultivated the riches of the continents. They built cities and towns, and fought for their freedom and the independence of the countries that enslaved them, all the while developing new cultures, new languages, new religions, new peoples. Females represented 30 percent of the people who survived the Middle Passage.</p>
<p>We know that most deported Africans were between the ages of 15 and 30. What it means is that the majority of the women who boarded the slave ships were married and had children. It was the case for many men too. These women were not only daughters and sisters, then, but they were also wives and mothers leaving husbands and young children behind, or seeing them embark on another ship. </p>
<p>The sheer agony at being so brutally separated from the family that had loved them, uprooted from their community forever can never be adequately described, and it often was expressed without words. On the slave ships, one surgeon explained, men and women “showed signs of extreme distress and despair<em>, </em>from a feeling of their situation at being torn from their friends and connections. They were often heard in the night making a howling melancholy noise, expressive of extreme anguish. It was because they had dreamed they were in their own country again<em>, </em>and finding themselves, when awake, in the hold of a slave-ship<em>. </em>This exquisite sensibility was particularly observable among the women; many of whom, on such occasions, he found in hysteric fits.”</p>
<p>The women who survived the ordeal represented 80 percent of all the women who landed in the Americas before 1820. Their presence had a considerable impact on the formation of the continents’ societies. They were central to the demographic, social, and cultural development of the Western Hemisphere.</p>
<p>They carried with them their knowledge of medicinal plants and various crops, their skills at gardening and midwifery, their cuisines, their songs, dances, and stories, and their gendered traditions, values, cultures, and religious practices. Although their mortality rates were high and their fertility rates were low, they were the women who brought to the world the first generations of Americans.</p>
<p>But as slaves and as women, they and their daughters and granddaughters bore the brunt of oppression. Studies have shown that women were more likely to be subjected to excessive physical abuse than men. They were more vulnerable, less likely to respond with force. As Frederick Douglass wrote, “He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest.” Women, like men, were stripped naked and whipped and humiliated in front of their children and the larger community.</p>
<p>The abjection of slavery took an added dimension when women were concerned. They were the victims of sexual abuse, from harassment to forced prostitution, and from breeding to rape. Rape by sailors on the slave ships, and rape by overseers, slaveholders, and their sons in the Americas was a persistent threat to all, a horrific reality to many. Used, like it continues to be used today, as a weapon of terror, rape was meant to assert power over and demean not only the women, but also their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, who were reminded daily that they were considered less than men since they could not protect their womenfolk. Breeding through compulsion or incentives was another appaling feature of the gender-based violence and exploitation women had to endure. Overall, the sexual abuse of women was part of the larger attempt at demoralization and submission of the entire community.</p>
<p>Slavery did not recognize the sanctity of marriage. Couples and families could be broken up at any time, without warning. Commonly, except on large plantations, husbands and wives did not reside on the same place, sometimes not in the same neighborhood following sales or owners’ relocation. Thus, the reality is that despite men’s often incredibly heroic efforts at visiting and supporting their families, women were forced to raise their children largely on their own, for as long as they could since they lived under the constant threat of sales, sale of their children, or their own sale.</p>
<p>But in the midst of it all, women fought back in a multitude of ways. Throughout the Americas, their “insolence” was noted. Verbal confrontations, gestures, attitudes, looks, facial expressions that showed lack of respect and challenged authority were deemed to be mostly the weapon of women. These overt manifestations of hostility and insubordination could be brutally punished. It was often the women who were the poisoners of animals and people, spreading terror among slaveholders who feared for their lives and the lives of their families, and saw their holdings in beasts and humans shrink.Rejecting the owners’ management of their fertility, mothers and midwives were the abortionists, and the perpetrators of infanticide who refused to bring children into a miserable world and increase slaveholders’ fortunes.</p>
<p>Even if less frequently than men, women ran away to cities and free territories or stayed on their own or with their families in small and large maroon communities all over the Western Hemisphere. In the United States, there were mothers and their children who lived in caves they had dug 7 feet under the ground. Some gave birth there and remained safely hidden for years. During insurrections women fed the fighters, transported ammunition, acted as spies, and tended to the wounded. Some fought arms in hand sometimes disguised as men. Others used their gender as a weapon. The uprising and the revolution in St Domingue, for example, saw some women exchange sexual favors with the French soldiers for bullets and gunpowder. Women were hanged, whipped to death, burned alive, mauled by dogs, or shot for marronage, assault, arson, poisoning, or rebellion.</p>
<p>But one of the most enduring aspects of women’s resistance was the preservation and passing on of culture. Because of the widespread dislocation of families, mothers were, not the only but too often the main, social and cultural nurturers of 15 generations of enslaved men and women in the Americas. Given the circumstances, they, predominantly, provided their children with the inner strength and the coping mechanisms that enabled them to survive, live, love, hope, create, and form strong, resourceful communities.Through oral traditions, skills, deeds, example, and sheer determination, women largely kept the African Diaspora in the Atlantic world together. They were instrumental in creating and transmitting the dynamic and vibrant cultures we know as African-American, Gullah-Geechee, Caribbean, Bushinenge, Afro-Peruana, Afro-Brasileira, Creole, and antillaise.</p>
<p>The women’s bravery and stamina in a world that tried to degrade them as human beings, as Africans, and as women, is an extraordinarily inspiring example for all times and all places. In a most evil terror system, in a racist, sexist and patriarchal environment, women found ways: they taught, they protected, they nurtured, they challenged, and they fought.</p>
<p>The women’s struggles, alongside the men, did not end with the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. As the need for an International Decade for People of African Descent abundantly shows, their 200 million descendants in the Atlantic world still face daunting obstacles: individual and institutional racism, racial and gender marginalization and discrimination, poverty, de facto segregation and the denial of basic rights. Breaking the silence and confronting these issues, including modern slavery and sexual slavery that primarily victimize girls and women, are our responsibility today so that the next generations will not have to fight the same battles.</p>
<p>As a historian of the slave trade and slavery, there are many things I wish I did not know, or I wish I could forget. But one thing I know and I will not forget is the remarkable creativity, energy, resourcefulness and fortitude of the women who, with amazing courage and grace, showed us the way.</p>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="Ark of Return (detail)" height="375" width="500" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/IMG_20150325_151821.jpg" /><figcaption>The Ark of Return at the United Nations</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>That memorable day saw the <a href="http://webtv.un.org/search/the-unveiling-of-the-permanent-memorial-the-ark-of-return/4134214422001?term=ark%20of%20return" rel="nofollow">unveiling </a>of the magnificent “<a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50424#.VRWS9JPF98U" rel="nofollow">Ark of Return</a>,” a beautiful, striking memorial designed by architect Rodney Leon, who is also the creator of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan. The permanent memorial is located on UN ground.</p>
Women's Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/03/27/remembering-women-slavery#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 16:39:31 -0400Schomburg Treasures: The Green Bookhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/03/24/schomburg-treasures-green-book
K Menick, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<div class="digcol-image align-left align-left inline inline">
<figure class="caption caption caption digcol-image"><a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/29219280-892b-0132-4271-58d385a7bbd0"><img alt="Green Book 1947" src="http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=5207618&amp;t=w" width="300px" /></a>
<figcaption class="digcol-caption">The Negro Motorist Green Book, 1947</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>"<a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=about&amp;scroll=0">Carry your Green Book with you—you may need it</a>."</p>
<p>The mid-20<sup>th</sup> Century: a time of freedom and grand opportunities. Ever bigger and faster and cheaper cars allowed an exciting ease of movement across America's new parkways, numbered highways, and interstates. The automobile changed the world, and suddenly the horizon seemed to go on forever. But some other essential changes were a long time coming, and for one segment of the population that horizon was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/books/23green.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" rel="nofollow">filled with landmines</a>.</p>
<p><span><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129885990" rel="nofollow">Enter Victor Green</a>. From 1936 to 1966 (with only a pause for WWII), this postal worker from New Jersey published the directories known today as the Green Book. (The actual titles were variously: <em>The Negro Motorist Green Book; The Negro Travelers' Green Book; The Travelers' Green Book</em>.) These listed—first in NYC only, later throughout much of the world—hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, nightclubs, bars, gas stations, etc. where black travelers would be welcome. </span>In an age of sundown towns, segregation, and lynching, the Green Book became an indispensable tool for safe navigation.</p>
<p>Victor's introductions always concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He continued publication until just after <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b20133835~S67">the passage</a> of the <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b16863401~S67">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>.</p>
<p>But the story doesn't end there. To flip through a Green Book is to open a window into history and perhaps to see, the tiniest amount, <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b18709080~S67">through the eyes of someone who lived it</a>. Read these books; map them in your mind. Think about the trips you could take, can take, will take. See how the size of the world can change depending on the color of your skin.</p>
<p>The Schomburg's full collection is <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=about">available here</a>.</p>
Transportationhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/03/24/schomburg-treasures-green-book#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 16:45:54 -0400A Decade for People of African Descenthttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/12/15/decade-people-african-descent
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p style="text-align:center"><img title="International Decade" height="114" width="220" class="media-element file-teaser" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/15583350750_178137ef38_m.jpg?itok=T01_AIGk" alt="" /></p>
<p>The United Nations has proclaimed 2015-2024 the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">International Decade for People of African Descent</a>. In the next ten years, the international community will be tasked with combating racism and discrimination, ensuring the protection of the human rights of people African descent and contributing toward tangible improvements in their lives.</p>
<p>Fittingly, the Schomburg Center was step one on the path to the official launch of the Decade, whose slogan is "People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice and Development". The Decade is placed under the leadership of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and on December 9, ambassadors, UN dignitaries, students, and others, gathered in the Langston Hughes atrium for a pre-event to Human Rights Day and to the official takeoff of the International Decade, both happening the following day. </p>
<p style="text-align:center"><img alt="UN group" height="293" width="500" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/group_0.jpg" /></p>
<p>Deputy UN Secretary General <a href="http://www.un.org/sg/dsg/statements/index.asp?nid=582" rel="nofollow">Jan Eliasson</a> stressed the important role of the Center, which “has been a great partner with us in the UN for a long time, organizing exhibits on ending racial discrimination and remembering also the shame of the transatlantic slave trade…. It’s a towering presence, filled with art and information about African Americans, the African diaspora and African experiences.” Indeed, as the international community is about to enter the first year of the International Decade, the Schomburg Center will celebrate its 9th decade of preserving and interpreting the global black experience.</p>
<p>Schomburg Director <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DisSBa4TqM&amp;feature=youtu.be" rel="nofollow">Khalil Gibran Muhammad</a> reminded the audience it was standing upon the ashes of Langston Hughes, “the most translated American poet in history”, a widely-traveled man, an inspiration as he “spoke about the struggle for democracy and human dignity.” Today’s struggles were made starkly salient by the continued need for demonstrations “around the right to life free of state-sanctioned violence.” A sentiment echoed by Jan Eliasson, who stated, "I need not remind anyone in this room of the anguished, but vitally important, public debate we are witnessing these days, in this country, on violent police action and racial profiling."</p>
<p>On December 10th, during the <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49575#.VInzhPR4pLa" rel="nofollow">official launch</a> of the Decade—which referenced the event at the Schomburg Center—all the remarks at the UN headquarters underlined the centrality of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, and colonialism not only to the development of the modern world but also to continued racism, discrimination, and violence against people of African descent. As I listened to the speakers, I thought of the illuminating conversation, <a href="http://new.livestream.com/schomburgcenter/events/3631671" rel="nofollow">“Slavery, Universities, Inner Cities”</a> that took place at the Center just a day earlier. Davarian Baldwin of Trinity College and Craig S. Wilder of MIT discussed how these crimes against humanity were intimately linked to the foundation, in every sense of the term, of American universities, and how this shameful heritage expresses itself today in some of the woes inner cities face.</p>
<p>Two other Schomburg initiatives around the slave trade and slavery came to my mind: the digital exhibitions <a href="http://www.inmotionaame.org/" rel="nofollow"><em>In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience</em></a> and <a href="http://abolition.nypl.org/"><em>The Abolition of the Slave Trade: The Forgotten Story</em></a>. When Sir Hilary Beckles, Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and keynote speaker at the UN, spoke of the African Diaspora in Asia and the Middle East, I thought of a third exhibition, <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/"><em>The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World</em></a>. It covers this too-often neglected part of the black world. A black world that is at the center of <em><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/">Africana Age: African and African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century.</a> </em>Here is a <a href="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/UN%20Feature%20Address%20delivered%20at%20the%20United%20Nations_Hilary%20Beckles.pdf">transcript of the speech</a>, and the <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q8dzko4wmo6nw2b/AADC8W5gpNUjEe0IiRLNmtbna?dl=0" rel="nofollow">audio recording</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><img alt="African Diaspora in the East" height="391" width="500" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/Africans-to-SW-Asia-11.jpg" title="African Diaspora in Asia" /></p>
<p>The recently established <a href="http://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schomburg/lapidus-center">Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery</a> will play a major role in raising <span> public consciousness and historical literacy. </span> Its primary mission is to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge—through fellowships, exhibitions, and public programs—on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery pertaining to the Atlantic World. A gift by Sid Lapidus of 400 rare books makes the Center home to one of the world’s premier collections of slavery material.</p>
<p>For decades the Schomburg Center has been involved in major international initiatives concerning Africa and the African Diaspora and as it celebrates the International Decade for People of African Descent, it continues its daily work of offering a diversity of public programs and exhibitions, and of collecting, preserving, interpreting, and making accessible materials pertaining to the global black experience from yesterday to today.</p>
African American Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/12/15/decade-people-african-descent#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 15:29:22 -0500Schomburg Treasures: WPA Artworkhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/12/11/wpa-artwork
K Menick, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<div class="digcol-image align-left align-left inline inline">
<figure class="caption caption caption digcol-image"><a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/42457a50-2892-0132-a0a1-58d385a7bbd0"><img alt="Harding Field" src="http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=5179592&amp;t=w" width="300px" /></a>
<figcaption class="digcol-caption">Harding Field, by Caroline Durieux, 1943</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>Part of FDR's New Deal, the Works Progress/Projects Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 to provide paying jobs for the unemployed at every skill level. Workers built bridges, dams, roads, libraries, courthouses, schools, parks and gardens—and they created art. </p>
<p>Some of that art took the form of murals, like the ones on view at the <a href="http://www.iraas.com/wpa/" rel="nofollow">Harlem Hospital Center</a>. Other smaller-scale works are in the collections of the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg">Schomburg Center</a>, right across the street.</p>
<p>Last year, the Schomburg <a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/schomburg-collects-wpa-artists-1935-1943">held an exhibition</a> to highlight its collection of WPA artworks. Images of these works are now available <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?filters%5Btitle_uuid_s%5D%5B%5D=Works%20Progress%20Administration%20(WPA)%20Art%7C%7Cab394b60-d4bc-0131-8bd5-58d385a7bbd0&amp;keywords=&amp;layout=false#/?scroll=47">on the Digital Collections website</a>.</p>
<p>The collection contains lithographs, etchings, and pastels showing allegorical scenes, cityscapes, portraits, etc., by Charles Alston, Nan Lurie, Riva Helfond, and others, many of which were produced at the Harlem Community Arts Center.</p>
<p>(The precursor to the WPA was the Public Works of Art Project, which commissioned another of the Schomburg's treasures: the <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/170">Aaron Douglas murals</a>. These are also <a href="http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?filters%5BnamePart_mtxt_s%5D%5B%5D=Douglas,%20Aaron&amp;keywords=&amp;layout=false">on the website</a>, and viewable in the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/divisions/jbh-research-and-reference-division">Jean Blackwell Hutson Research &amp; Reference Division</a>.)</p>
Harlemhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/12/11/wpa-artwork#commentsThu, 11 Dec 2014 15:04:49 -0500Song and Dance: The Power Of Black Musichttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/21/song-dance-power-black-music
Christopher Moore<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="Part of Aaron Douglas&#039;s Aspects of Negro Life" class="media-element file-teaser" height="332" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/Life%20In%20Africa_0.jpg?itok=0wEjSuM9" title="The Negro In Africa by Aaron Douglas" width="390" /><figcaption>Part of Aaron Douglas's Aspects of Negro Life</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>American music is largely influenced by African American music, so concluded eminent musicologists just before the 20th century.</p>
<p>American culture, unwilling to accept blacks as equal citizens, had willingly accepted spirituals, gospel, sorrow songs, work songs, lullabies, love songs and instruments, like the banjo, which influenced virtually all music genres, Classical to Country &amp; Western.</p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest African American cultural influence, apart from centuries of music and enslaved labor, arrived in the 20th Century and continues, in The Dance.</p>
<p>In the 1890s, white conservative Americans immediately opposed African American composer Scott Joplin's very popular <em>Rag Time</em>. Rag was rebellious music, conservatives argued. Its rhythms were hypnotic and made dancers behave seemingly euphoric and wanton.</p>
<p>Criticism came also from black American church leaders who condemned what they regarded as the juxtaposition of sacred mating and fertility movements, used at weddings and birthing rituals, with secular music.</p>
<p>Rag and emerging jazz and blues styles were just too sexy. Young Americans, who were not yet known as "teenagers" liked it just fine. The Roaring Twenties got much of its life from songs, rhythms and dances, performed by whites but influenced by black music.</p>
<p>Writes Samuel Floyd in<em> </em><em><a class="catalog-link" href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;q=The%20Power%20Of%20Black%20Music&amp;commit=Search&amp;searchOpt=catalogue" title="The Power Of Black Music" rel="nofollow">The Power Of Black Music</a></em>, African song in general is erotic because fertility and sexual prowess are central values in African life, African dances are designed to educate boys and girls toward their adult behavior.</p>
<p>“Of Dance, Drum and Song, dance was the most central to ritual.”<img title="THE POWER OF BLACK MUSIC by Samuel Floyd" style="float:right" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/Jacket_86.jpg" alt="" /></p><p>In 1901, leading musicians denounced rag as "rot". The American Society of Professors of Dancing voted to ban rag from ballrooms.</p>
<p>Before ragtime, popular American dance movements were orderly ballroom waltzes and quadrilles. <em>Syncopated</em> music by Joplin, W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton created "Jazz dancing" which was deplored by many white adults, who were concerned about young people's access to recorded music and new privacy found in cars and subways.</p>
<p>Black musicians were denied entry into music unions unless they conformed to white American and European stylings.</p>
<p>In 1905, African American composer and conductor James Reese Europe began reshaping American dance. He started with the waltz and rag. Hired by ballroom dancers Vernon and Irene Castle, Europe began creating the new American popular music--that is song and dance that didn't need to be identified as black.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><img alt="" class="media-element file-default" height="224" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/CASTLE_0.jpg" title="Irene and Vernon Castle dance to music by James Reese Europe." width="369" /></p><p>Europe, who supervised several bands, is best known as Lt. Europe, commander of the World War One 369th Infantry Harlem Hellfighters Band which introduced jazz to Europe. Following his death in 1919, Lt. Europe was replaced as director of the Harlem based New Amsterdam Musical Association by Rabbi Arnold Ford.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><img alt="" class="media-element file-default" height="408" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/RABBI_0.jpg" title="Rabbi Arnold Ford, music director of the Universal Negro Improvement Assocation" width="360" /></p>
<p>The New Amsterdam Musical Association is Harlem's oldest African American corporation, founded in 1905 as a supporting agency for black musicians who were not allowed in the local white union. Rabbi Ford, music director of The Commandment Keepers (aka The Black Jews Of Harlem) was also music director for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, artist Aaron Douglas created murals to depict African Song and Dance. In one mural, Douglas prominently included the saxophone, a European instrument, first noted for its comic rhythms, but profoundly transformed by Black musicians.</p>
<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="Part of Aaron Douglas&#039;s Aspects of Negro Life" title="Song Of The Towers by Aaron Douglas" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/4%20MURALS_0.jpg" /><figcaption>Part of Aaron Douglas's Aspects of Negro Life</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>The artist's "Magisterial" Four Murals convey the pervasiveness of music and religion in African and African American lives, through labor, sorrow and joy.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who admired America's bigoted society, banned black music and black musicians, vilifying supporters of black music within Germany.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><img title="Entartete, meaning &amp;quot;Degenerate&amp;quot;Music" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/%2522DEGENERATE%2522%20%20Music_0.jpg" alt="" /></p><p><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/170">The Aaron Douglas murals are on public display at the Schomburg Center For Research In Black Culture.</a>
</p><p style="text-align:center"><img alt="" class="media-element file-default" height="283" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/JBH%20READING%20ROOM.JPG" title="Magesterial Murals by Aaron Douglas" width="500" /></p>
African American Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/21/song-dance-power-black-music#commentsTue, 21 Oct 2014 11:37:12 -0400Africans in India: Then and Nowhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/17/africans-india-then-and-now
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<figure class="caption caption caption" style="float:left"><img alt="Chief Minister Ikhlas Khan - ca. 1650- San Diego Museum of Art" class="media-element file-teaser" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/05-02.jpg?itok=xRDx2GX3" title="" width="208" /><figcaption>Chief Minister Ikhlas Khan - ca. 1650- San Diego Museum of Art</figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg">Schomburg Center</a>'s exhibition <em>Africans in India: A Rediscovery</em> recently opened in New Delhi, India's capital, against a backdrop of racist attacks against Africans. The contrast between the African experience of yesterday and that of today could not have been greater and the exhibition could not have come at a more appropriate time.</p>
<p>September 28, Rajiv Chowk metro station. In a violent, ugly scene that went viral on YouTube, three African students are beaten with iron bars, sticks, and glass shards by a mob. “We were travelling in metro, and a few guys started clicking our pictures," the students from Gabon and Burkina Faso recounted, "on asking them about why they were doing that, they started misbehaving and that ultimately led the metro staff to take us and those guys to the police officer’s cabin. Even there, they kept passing racist comments which made us furious too. From there, the heat kept building upon and ultimately led to a fight. We were beaten up badly by a majority of people around us at that time.” A few feet away from the large crowd that can be seen laughing, snapping pictures, and yelling "Bharat Mata ki Jai," "Victory to Mother India," two policemen are looking on.</p>
<figure class="caption caption caption" style="float:right"><img alt="Opening at UNESCO, Paris" class="media-element file-teaser" height="204" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/UNESCO%20%281%29.jpg?itok=LBToxVcc" title="" width="220" /><figcaption>Opening at UNESCO, Paris</figcaption></figure><p>Writing in <em><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/all-that-matters/Upward-mob-ility-As-India-prospers-it-is-getting-more-racist/articleshow/44372945.cms" rel="nofollow">The Times of India</a>, </em>Siddarth Varadarajan noted, "The flash mob that appeared and disappeared at the metro station that day was summoned to the spot by the triumphalism and crassness that India's rise on the world stage is generating amongst the urban middle class. As the middle class prospers, it is becoming more insular, more intolerant, more anxious. No one ever told them that as we strive for—and insist on—a bigger share of global power for ourselves, we need to learn how to accommodate the world, to grow less small."</p>
<p>October 8, Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, a five minute drive from Rajiv Chowk. As the sun sets, I light a wick to open the exhibition <a href="http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/31/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers"><em>Africans in India</em></a>. Just a few weeks earlier, I was in Paris at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inaugurating the French/English version of the exhibition. Government ministers, ambassadors, and celebrities had gathered on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the <em>Slave Route Project,</em> a worldwide initiative to break the silence about the slave trade and slavery. The ambience was joyous, hopeful, celebratory.</p>
<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="opening at IGNCA, Delhi" class="media-element file-default" height="198" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/IGNCA_0.jpg" title="opening at IGNCA, Delhi" width="400" /><figcaption>Opening at IGNCA, Delhi</figcaption></figure></div>
<p>In Delhi, the ceremony in the immense gardens of the IGNCA reflects a different mood as everyone is acutely aware of the special significance of the event. The attack has generated media coverage not only in <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/city-of-mobs-114100400591_1.html" rel="nofollow">India</a>, but also in <a href="http://www.transparentnigeria.com/news_entries/3242/%E2%80%98Racist%E2%80%99-Indian-mob-attacks-African-students" rel="nofollow">Africa</a>, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2780841/Time-end-Indian-racism-against-black-people.html" rel="nofollow">Europe</a>, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/asia/beating-of-african-students-by-mob-in-india-prompts-soul-searching-on-race.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">U.S.</a>, and the <a href="http://www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog/?p=8429" rel="nofollow">Caribbean</a>; and as we celebrate the past, there is no escaping the distressing reality of the present.</p>
<figure class="caption caption caption" style="float:left"><img alt="Ikhlas Khan and Adil Shah, ca. 1670 - San Diego Museum of Art" class="media-element file-teaser" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/1412777033-1149_2.png?itok=BbpHr_5l" title="" width="155" /><figcaption>Ikhlas Khan and Adil Shah, ca. 1670 - San Diego Museum of Art</figcaption></figure><p>In 50 abundantly illustrated panels, <em>Africans in India</em> shows African high-ranking officials, generals, and rulers, who for centuries were an <a href="http://scroll.in/article/682635/Rare-images-document-the-centuries-long-history-of-Africans-in-India" rel="nofollow">integral part</a> of India's social, political, cultural, and religious landscape. It was a time when being of a different origin, religion, color, or ethnicity was no obstacle to reaching the highest positions. A time when slave dynasties—like the Turkish slaves who founded the sultanate of Delhi—were established; when Africans who had arrived enslaved could become Chief Ministers, de facto rulers, or founders of princely states. A time when the word <em>Habshi</em> designated a person from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and was proudly worn by African notables. It was not a derogatory term as it is today.</p>
<p>Journalists seized on the sad irony of the situation, and several <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/When-black-was-no-bar-How-Africans-shaped-Indias-history/articleshow/44766055.cms" rel="nofollow">articles</a> focusing on the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/tracing-the-african-legacy-in-india/article6480753.ece" rel="nofollow">exhibition </a>referred to the anti-African racism that manifests itself in other parts of the country, but seems to be more intense in <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/newdelhi/violence-abuse-part-of-life-for-africans-in-delhi/article1-1270384.aspx" rel="nofollow">Delhi</a>. As Ms. Dipali Khanna, president of the IGNCA, noted, "It's a mere coincidence that our exhibition has started off at a time when the media is abuzz with stories of racial attacks on Africans in Delhi. But we do hope because of it, people will understand that Indians and Africans have coexisted since time immemorial."</p>
<p>The exhibition, and the subsequent curatorial talk and conference, became important teaching moments. A large number of schools are visiting <em>Africans in</em><em> India </em>and young students may thus grow up with an appreciation for the multicultural, multiracial meritocracy-outside of the Hindu caste system—that open-minded India was for so long. What happened there could, indeed, be a lesson to the world.</p>
<p>By bringing this unique page of history to life, the Schomburg Center will hopefully contribute to helping people—in India (where the exhibition will travel to other cities) and elsewhere—better negotiate the present and the future.</p>
<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="Africans. Detail of a 1590 Mughal painting. Museum Rietberg Zurich" class="media-element file-default" height="269" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/09c482f3-e462-4bc8-8109-f7a2328cff50.jpg" width="600" /><figcaption>Africans. Detail of a 1590 Mughal painting. Museum Rietberg Zurich</figcaption></figure></div>
History of Asiahttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/17/africans-india-then-and-now#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 13:49:28 -0400Célébrons le mois de l'histoire des noirshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/19/celebrons-le-mois-de-lhistoire-des-noirs
Libbhy Romero, BookOps<div style="text-align:center">
<figure class="caption caption caption"><img alt="Toussaint" class="media-element file-default" height="302" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/Toussaint.jpg" title="Toussaint" width="226" /><figcaption><a href="http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&amp;strucID=594749&amp;imageID=1242088&amp;word=noir&amp;s=1&amp;notword=&amp;d=&amp;c=&amp;f=&amp;k=1&amp;lWord=&amp;lField=&amp;sScope=&amp;sLevel=&amp;sLabel=&amp;sort=&amp;total=243&amp;num=160&amp;imgs=20&amp;pNum=&amp;pos=175">Image ID: 1242088<br />
Toussaint Louverture; Chef des Noirs Insurgés de Saint Domingue Paris Jean de Beauvais.</a></figcaption></figure></div>
<p><span>En commémoration du mois de l’histoire des noirs on vous propose ces titres dont vous trouvez dans le catalogue de NYPL. Réservez-les et cherchez-les à votre bibliothèque de quartier la plus proche.</span>
</p><p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19900971052907_absences_sans_frontires" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/AbsencesSansFrontieres.gif?itok=sdSL2Fm8" style="float:left" width="150" />Absences sans frontières</a>
</p><p>Trouillot, Evelyne, 1954-</p>
<p>« Géraldine grandit en Haïti entre sa grand-mère et sa tante, loin de son père émigré à New-York.</p>
<p>D’un côté trois femmes courageuses, dans ce pays aussi secoué par les régimes politiques que par la nature, qui tentent, chacune à sa façon, de se battre contre le sort, de trouver leur voie et un peu de bonheur..</p>
<p>De l’autre un homme instruit qui ne vit, clandestin, que de petits boulots pour financer les études de son enfant et la rendre heureuse.</p>
<p>Le séisme désastreux du 12 janvier 2010 bouleversera leurs vies en dévoilant un terrible secret.» <a href="http://www.chevre-feuille.fr/les-collections/d-une-fiction,-l-autre/399-absences-sans-frontieres.html" rel="nofollow">Éditions Chèvre Feuille Étoilée</a></p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19825128052907_le_dsespoir_des_anges" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/LeDesespoirDesAnges.jpg?itok=Ukti1eSM" style="float:left" width="116" />Le désespoir des anges</a> </p>
<p>Kénol, Henry</p>
<p>« Peu après avoir réussi à s’arracher à la prostitution, une jeune Haïtienne découvre un jour que, sous ses apparences de bourgeoise protégée, la propriétaire de l’hôtel qui l’emploie désormais n’est, comme elle, qu’une femme en souffrance. Mais, durant l’inattendu dialogue qui s’engage alors, la “domestique” ne cesse de voir surgir les images du terrible passé qui a irrémédiablement fait naufrager son destin et brisé tous ses rêves.</p>
<p>Comment ne serait-elle pas hantée par ce jour de triste mémoire où, poussée à bout par les abominables sévices sexuels qui lui étaient, comme à tant d’autres, impunément infligés par des nantis habitués à abuser sans vergogne de la misère de leurs inférieurs, elle a, entre provocation et désespoir, accepté de devenir la concubine du chef de gang qui faisait la loi dans le plus vaste bidonville du pays ? Et comment oublier de quelle déchéance et de quelle dépravation elle a payé sa soumission à ce sanguinaire potentat avant que l’assassinat de ce dernier ne la contraigne à fuir pour échapper à la haine féroce du nouveau “patron” des cités dont elle avait naguère refusé les avances ?</p>
<p>Dans cet impressionnant roman dont tous les personnages sont embarqués sans retour dans la spirale de la violence, Henry Kénol, s’inspirant de la crapuleuse prise en otage des cités-bidonvilles d’Haïti par des gangs armés au début des années 2000, décrit sans tabou la scène ordinaire d’un enfer sur terre où l’impuissance des victimes rencontre le silence assourdissant du corps politique.» <a href="http://www.actes-sud.fr/catalogue/litterature/le-desespoir-des-anges" rel="nofollow">Actes Sud</a></p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19587945052907_notre-dame_du_nil" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/NotreDameDuNil_0.jpg?itok=0H_eeXZt" style="float:left" width="150" />Notre-Dame du Nil</a> </p>
<p>Mukasonga, Scholastique</p>
<p>« Au Rwanda, un lycée de jeunes filles perché sur la crête Congo-Nil, à 2 500 mètres d'altitude, près des sources du grand fleuve égyptien. Les familles espèrent que dans ce havre religieusement baptisé Notre-Dame du Nil, isolé, d'accès difficile, loin des tentations de la capitale, leurs filles parviendront vierges au mariage négocié pour elles dans l'intérêt du lignage. Les transgressions menacent au cœur de cette puissante et belle nature où par ailleurs un rigoureux quota «ethnique» limite à 10 % le nombre des élèves tutsi. </p>
<p>Sur le même sommet montagneux, dans une plantation à demi abandonnée, un «vieux Blanc», peintre et anthropologue excentrique, assure que les Tutsi descendent des pharaons noirs de Méroé. Avec passion, il peint à fresque les lycéennes dont les traits rappellent ceux de la déesse Isis et d'insoumises reines Candace sculptées sur les stèles, au bord du Nil, il y a trois millénaires. Non sans risques pour sa jeune vie, et pour bien d'autres filles du lycée, la déesse est intronisée dans le temple qu'il a bâti pour elle. <br />
Le huis clos où doivent vivre ces lycéennes bientôt encerclées par les nervis du pouvoir hutu, les amitiés, les désirs et les haines qui traversent ces vies en fleur, les luttes politiques, les complots, les incitations aux meurtres raciaux, les persécutions sournoises puis ouvertes, les rêves et les désillusions, les espoirs de survie, c'est, dans ce microcosme existentiel, un prélude exemplaire au génocide rwandais, fascinant de vérité, d'une écriture directe et sans faille. » <a href="http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Continents-Noirs/Notre-Dame-du-Nil" rel="nofollow">Gallimard</a></p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19807981052907_tchimb_raid" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/TchimbeRaid_1.jpg?itok=HToIGt1X" style="float:left" width="140" />Tchimbé raid: tiens bon</a> </p>
<p>Silbande, Charlène</p>
<p>« Julie est une jeune femme née libre en Martinique de parents qui furent jadis esclaves. Elevée au cœur d'une exploitation de canne à sucre, elle rêve de Paris, la capitale. Un jour, elle verra les musées et les monuments… Hélas, le destin en décidera autrement… La mort, le travail, les dettes, l'amour, la solidarité, la magie… Découvrez la vie de cette femme pleine de courage qui vous fera visiter la Martinique comme personne. » <a href="http://www.auteursdumonde.fr/catalogue.php" rel="nofollow">Auteurs du Monde</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/18884349052907_voix_du_monde" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" height="220" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/VoixDuMonde.jpg?itok=ipRs3SAB" style="float:left" width="143" />Voix du monde : nouvelles francophones</a></p>
<p>« En 1808, avec De la littérature des Nègres, l’abbé Grégoire lançait un appel à une expansion géographique de la littérature de langue française. Depuis lors, comme en témoigne cet ouvrage, la langue française n’a cessé de s’étirer et de s’épanouir mondialement. Quatorze auteurs d’Afrique, des Antilles, d’Amérique et d’Europe ont contribué à ce recueil de nouvelles qui rend hommage à la littérature d’expression française.</p>
<p>Daniel Maximin, Dany Laferrière, Véronique Tadjo, Gaston-Paul Effa, Boualem Sansal, Ernest Pépin, Nimrod, Patrice Nganang, Pascal Kramer, Suzanne Dracius, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé, Raphaël Confiant</p>
<p>Ces auteurs se sont rassemblés autour de sujets à la fois communs et singuliers afin de mettre leurs voix multiples en diapason.</p>
<p>Ces nouvelles sont éditées par Bénédicte Boisseron, professeur de langue et littératures francophones à l’université du Montana et Frieda Ekotto, professeur de français, de littérature comparée et d’études africaines à l’université du Michigan. » <a href="http://pub.u-bordeaux3.fr/index.php/voix-du-monde-nouvelles-francophones-1.html" rel="nofollow">Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux</a></p>
French Literaturehttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/19/celebrons-le-mois-de-lhistoire-des-noirs#commentsWed, 19 Feb 2014 11:57:04 -0500Dr. Cheryl LaRoche Presents "Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance" at Columbus Libraryhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/06/dr-cheryl-laroche-free-black-communities
Rodger Taylor<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" height="300" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/cover.png" style="float:left" width="200" /></span>Dr. Cheryl LaRoche’s book, <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19984984052907_free_black_communities_and_the_underground_railroad" rel="nofollow"> Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance</a></em> was released on January 13, 2014 and she says it’s been a long journey to get to this point. Weaving a story about the enslaved and geography, she traveled around the country for at least five years developing her thesis. But I would say in many ways, Dr. LaRoche invested a career in this endeavor. When I first met her in 1992, Cheryl was a conservator for the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm" rel="nofollow"> African Burial Ground Project</a>. I know some of those years and experiences have fallen onto the pages of this book.</p><p>I had the pleasure of conducting a phone interview with our author the other day and here are a few nuggets:</p><p>“When you think about the Underground Railroad, it is a land based operation, – moving from one section of the country (where slavery exists) to another where it doesn’t take place – You must negotiate the land to get your freedom. We haven’t focused in on the land itself in the exploration of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html" rel="nofollow"> the Underground Railroad</a>. When you start to read the land you come up with some different conclusions."</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" height="195" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/slave%20family.jpg" style="float:right" width="258" /></span>She spoke of <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=iron+furnace+regions&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbo=u&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=arzyUriAL-LgsAT78IHYBA&amp;ved=0CD4QsAQ&amp;biw=1280&amp;bih=923" rel="nofollow"> iron furnace regions</a> in places like Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, where "veins of iron ran more or less like rivers. Enslaved African Americans work, as iron masters, sometimes they are blacksmiths, laborers, doing all kinds of stuff. They are expert at these jobs. They know the land. They understand the landscape and many use their knowledge and expertise to escape from bondage."</p><p>I probed her further about the runaways.</p><p>“A debate rages about what the numbers were, but the runaway ads are the tip of the iceberg, if you are really successful you are never heard of again.”</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" height="242" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/slave%20ad.jpg" style="float:left" width="208" /></span>A list of Dr. LaRoche's academic and professional achievements and affiliations would take an hour to write – I'll cherry pick five things that are representative—she works at <a href="http://www.si.edu/" rel="nofollow"> the Smithsonian</a>, consults or has consulted for the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Henson" rel="nofollow"> Josiah Henson</a> site, the <a href="http://visitmaryland.org/events/pages/harriettubman.aspx" rel="nofollow"> Harriet Tubman by-way tour</a>, the <a href="http://www.aampmuseum.org/" rel="nofollow"> African American Museum of Philadelphia</a> and the <a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/09/local/the-case-of-the-duffield-street-homes" rel="nofollow"> Duffield Street Project</a> here in Brooklyn.</p><p>If the weather and my luck hold (and I won't tempt fate by talking about either), Dr. LaRoche is giving the first New York City presentation of her book at <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/columbus"> Columbus Library</a> at 742 10th Avenue between 50th and 51st streets in Manhattan on <strong>Tuesday February 11 at 4 p.m.</strong> Amazingly, admission is free. She will have books for sale and signing.</p><p>Even though it is the shortest month of the year, February is still African American History month. I am going to spend the occasion specifically celebrating Paul Robeson, John Brown and Dr. Cheryl Janifer LaRoche.</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" height="225" src="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/287.JPG" style="float:right" width="300" /></span>I have yet to read Dr. LaRoche's book. I will and hopefully by the end of the month post something I'll call Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance - Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, Part 2<strong> - </strong>in which I'll offer a brief, (dare I say) cutting edge review of the book and I hope a few more words from Dr. LaRoche.</p><p>Now I’ll conclude with this description of <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19984984052907_free_black_communities_and_the_underground_railroad" rel="nofollow">Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance</a></em> cobbled together from a press release by Dr. LaRoche's publisher <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/" rel="nofollow">University Press of Illinois</a>:</p><blockquote><p>In this enlightening study, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories, which concentrated on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. Exploring the religious and fraternal institutions at the heart of these free African American communities, LaRoche demonstrates how the AME and Baptist churches and Prince Hall Masons, in addition to Quakers, provided both physical and social structures that fostered escape from slavery.</p></blockquote>African American Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/06/dr-cheryl-laroche-free-black-communities#commentsThu, 06 Feb 2014 17:01:19 -050012 Years a Slave. What About 15 Years in a Cave?http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/01/31/12-years-slave
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" src="http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=497439&amp;t=r" style="float:left" width="100" /></span>We’ll know soon if Steve McQueen’s film gets an Oscar. But one thing is sure: the heretofore largely unfamiliar Solomon Northup has become a household name. For the past few years, he has also been one of my informants. And what I valued most about what he had to say, turned out to be of no interest to McQueen. Of course, what I was concerned with was not central to Northup’s personal experience and thus could not have been a major part of the film. But it was part of an important context that is missing in the Oscar contender.</p><p>As Cornell’s Carole Boyce Davies so rightly stressed in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/12-years-a-slave-fails-to-show-resistence" rel="nofollow"><em>The Guardian</em></a>, the film completely eschews resistance in general and resistance by flight in particular. Yet Northup witnessed several cases of retreat to the woods and swamps—he even planned his own escape and fed the young maroon Celeste—and his testimony, among myriad others, informed my book <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/20021735052907_slaverys_exiles" rel="nofollow">Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons</a>.</em></p><p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" height="130" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/styles/sidebar_square/public/slaverys_exiles_diouf_0.jpg?itok=sYsdenRp" style="float:left" width="130" /></span><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/17602585052907_twelve_years_a_slave" rel="nofollow">Northup</a> did not run away; but countless others did and chose to define their own freedom, outside of white control, be it Southern, Northern, Spanish or French. They left behind the terrorist system that oppressed them and created a new life, settling in and measuring themselves against a wild and difficult environment. Former maroon Tom Wilson explained in the 1930s why they preferred this alternative: “I felt safer,” he said, “among the alligators than among the white men.”</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" height="182" src="http://contentcafe2.btol.com/ContentCafe/Jacket.aspx?&amp;userID=NYPL49807&amp;password=CC68707&amp;Value=9780807831038&amp;content=M&amp;Return=1&amp;Type=M" style="float:right" width="120" /></span>Marronage was much more extensive in the United States than previously thought, and for many maroons it took the unique form of cave dwelling. Men, women, and children were willing to live for years in houses they dug underground. The sister of famous memoirist <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/11668405052907_narrative_of_the_life_of_moses_grandy" rel="nofollow">Moses Grandy</a> gave birth to three babies in hers. <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/15548575052907_nat_turner" rel="nofollow">Nat Turner</a> dug himself two (rudimentary) caves and hid there after the revolt. However, the most emblematic of the cave dwellers, were undoubtedly Pattin of Virginia and his wife who were so determined to be and stay free that they lived in a cave for 15 years and raised 15 children there emerging only after the “Surrender.”</p><p>But the success of resistance in the woods cannot be credited only to the people who settled there; it also directly rested on the community’s willingness to help. A community totally absent in McQueen’s film, in which—contrary to Northup’s autobiography and to reality—enslaved men and women are portrayed as silent ghosts and Northup is almost constantly on his own as is seemingly fitting for any "hero"in Western cinema.</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" src="http://contentcafe2.btol.com/ContentCafe/Jacket.aspx?&amp;userID=NYPL49807&amp;password=CC68707&amp;Value=0807828726&amp;content=M&amp;Return=1&amp;Type=M" style="float:left" width="120" /></span>For the people still on the farms and plantations, resistance was providing the maroons with food, clothes, guns, ammunition, and support. It was spying on owners, overseers, and patrollers to inform on upcoming raids and helping kill the bloodhounds. Without the active or tacit solidarity of the community—although it was not infallible, Northup himself betrayed a group of fugitives—maroons, runaways, and conspirators could not have accomplished much.</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" height="182" src="http://contentcafe2.btol.com/ContentCafe/Jacket.aspx?&amp;userID=NYPL49807&amp;password=CC68707&amp;Value=9780252036910&amp;content=M&amp;Return=1&amp;Type=M" style="float:right" width="120" /></span><em>12 Years a Slave</em>, the movie, does not live up to the book, but one can build on it. It can be a path to further learning, especially about what it omits. Scholarship on the numerous ways in which individuals and communities resisted or fought back is quite strong. Here are only a few of the books focusing on or largely exploring resistance in the United States, published in the past 10 years.</p><p>Various forms of resistance and the importance of the community and its networks can be found throughout Anthony E. Kaye’s seminal <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16647651052907_joining_places" rel="nofollow"><em>Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South</em></a>. W. J. Megginson's <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16420838052907_african_american_life_in_south_carolinas_upper_piedmont,_1780-1900" rel="nofollow"><em>African American Life in South Carolina’s Upper Piedmont 1780-1900</em></a> and <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19868092052907_rebels_and_runaways" rel="nofollow"><em>Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida</em> </a>by Larry E. Rivers explore several types of resistance.</p><p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" src="http://contentcafe2.btol.com/ContentCafe/Jacket.aspx?&amp;userID=NYPL49807&amp;password=CC68707&amp;Value=9780820330648&amp;content=M&amp;Return=1&amp;Type=M" style="float:left" width="100" /></span>Based on the diary of Landon Carter, Rhys Isaac traces the resistance taking place on the slaveholder’s large plantation—he owned hundreds of slaves—in the wider context of the American revolution: <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/15944790052907_landon_carters_uneasy_kingdom" rel="nofollow"><em>Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation</em></a>. Several contributions to <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/18361126052907_african_american_life_in_the_georgia_lowcountry" rel="nofollow"><em>African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee</em></a>, edited by Philip Morgan, present various forms of resistance. In <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/15974793052907_closer_to_freedom" rel="nofollow"><em>Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South</em></a>, Stephanie M. H. Camp studies gendered resistance. One chapter of Celia E. Naylor’s book <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16869114052907_african_cherokees_in_indian_territory" rel="nofollow"><em>African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens</em></a>, investigates resistance among black Cherokees.</p><p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16191987052907_the_river_flows_on" rel="nofollow"><em>The River Flows on: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America </em></a>by Walter C. Rucker re-examines five revolts. <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16192004052907_stono" rel="nofollow"><em>Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt</em></a>, edited by Mark M. Smith, explores one of the most important uprisings in this country’s history.</p><p>For an exploration of the figure of the runaway and maroon in literature, see William Tynes Cowan, <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16040889052907_the_slave_in_the_swamp" rel="nofollow"><em>The Slave in the Swamp: Disrupting the Plantation Narrative</em></a>. Timothy J. Lockley’s <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/18021753052907_maroon_communities_in_south_carolina" rel="nofollow"><em>Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record</em></a> is not a study, but, as its title indicates, a -very useful- compilation of official records and newspapers articles with introductory notes. The two-volume <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16862462052907_encyclopedia_of_slave_resistance_and_rebellion" rel="nofollow"><em>Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion</em></a> edited by Junius P. Rodriguez, covers not only the U.S.A. but also the rest of the Americas, Africa, and Asia.</p><h2><strong>Between The Lines @ the Schomburg Center</strong></h2><h2><strong>Thursday March 13 (rescheduled from February 13)</strong></h2><h2><strong>6:30pm-8:00pm</strong></h2><h3>I will be in conversation about <em>Slavery's Exiles</em> with Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize winner and DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. A book signing will follow the event.</h3><p>FREE - <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/between-the-lines-sylviane-diouf-tickets-9485544519?aff=eorg" rel="nofollow">Registration required</a></p>African American Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/01/31/12-years-slave#commentsFri, 31 Jan 2014 15:37:15 -0500My Mandela Momentshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/12/06/my-mandela-moments
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/mandelasqsplit_1.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="230" height="220" /></span>I learned of <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?q=Mandela%2C+Nelson%2C+1918-&amp;t=subject" rel="nofollow">Nelson Mandela</a>’s passing while waiting for my delayed flight at Atlanta Airport. I thought how much his painful and extraordinary life had exposed the terrible danger that faced those who fought for the rights, the dignity and the freedom of people of African origin or descent. That despairing reality was made all the more vivid because I was coming back to New York after several days spent with Kathleen Cleaver, immersed in documents and photographs from the Black Power Movement.</p>
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<p>When I heard TV commentators shocked at the inhumanity of the a<a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Apartheid" rel="nofollow">partheid</a> system that let Mandela spend 27 years in prison, I thought of the late Black Panther <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;q=geronimo%20pratt&amp;commit=Search&amp;searchOpt=catalogue" rel="nofollow">Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt</a>, wrongly jailed for 27 years too, not on Robben Island, but in California. I thought of the other political prisoners from the '60s and '70s still behind bars in the U.S. And of all those who languish in far too many parts of the world.</p>
<p>Another connection came to my mind. I pictured Mandela visiting <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Goree%20Island" rel="nofollow">Goree Island</a>, off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. It was 1991, just a year after his release from prison and the fact that he wanted to be there was highly significant. I have been to Goree perhaps fifty times, and cried on each occasion; I know that very few of the 12.5 million Africans deported to the Americas passed through the island, but the symbol is potent. According to the late curator of the "Slaves House," Mandela sat in one of two small, suffocating cells for rebellious captives, and emerged with red eyes, deeply shaken. One can only imagine his empathy for the departed Africans, his communion with the unconquered rebels, his outrage at the ignominy of the slave trade, and his feeling of connection to the people of the African Diaspora.</p>
<p>In that airport lounge I remembered Nelson Mandela as I saw him on June 21, 1990. I had been privileged to be invited to a town meeting at City College. I can still feel the incredible excitement that took over when he walked, smiling and waving, onto the stage. But one of the moments I remember best was his exasperation at a question regarding his visits to Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi. "They support our struggle to the hilt," he sternly responded. And added, as the room erupted in applause, "any man who changes his principles according to whom he is dealing with that is not a man who can lead a nation." And a nation, he did lead, on a path that only he could imagine.</p>
<p>We all have our Nelson Mandela moments: words, images, stories, memories; from close or from far. We cherish them, we reflect on them. Today we feel orphaned and grateful for the astonishing life, example, courage, indignation, hope, strength, optimism, and love he shared with us.</p>
<p>See <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-africa-2010.html#end">photos</a> of Nelson Mandela and a <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/videos/mandela.html">video</a> from our online exhibition "<a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/">Africana Age</a>."</p>Africahttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/12/06/my-mandela-moments#commentsFri, 06 Dec 2013 04:04:30 -0500The Americas' First Muslimshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/10/13/americas-first-muslims
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="120" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/01_0.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="100" /></span>This week, 1.2 billion Muslims will celebrate <em>Eid-al-Adha</em>, the Feast of Sacrifice, or <em>Tabaski</em> as it is known in West Africa. Very few among them will have a thought for the hundreds of thousands of enslaved West Africans who, during almost four centuries, practiced Islam in the Americas. Although they left significant marks of their faith, cultures, and traditions, the Africans who first brought Islam to these shores have been mostly forgotten.</p>
<p>Muslims were among the very first Africans to be introduced into the Americas. They arrived as early as 1503 mostly from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria. Among them were teachers, students, judges, religious and military leaders, pilgrims to Mecca, and traders. The United States, where Senegambians represented almost 24 percent of the Africans, probably had <a href="http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=1&amp;topic=7" rel="nofollow">the largest proportion of Muslims in the Americas</a>, even though their actual numbers were higher in Brazil. </p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="181" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/baquaqua.img_assist_custom.jpeg" title="" width="120" /></span>Many Muslims were literate, reading and writing Arabic and their own languages in the Arabic script. From North Carolina to Georgia, from Brazil to<span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="181" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/omar.img_assist_custom." title="" width="120" /></span> Trinidad and Jamaica, they wrote letters, excerpts from the Qur'an, prayers, autobiographies, and other manuscripts that are still extant today.</p>
<p>Some Muslims who knew the Qur'an by heart wrote their own copies. Among them was Ayuba Suleyman Diallo, whose portrait opens this post. Part of the religious elite in Senegal, he was kidnapped and enslaved in Maryland in 1731. He wrote three copies of the Qur'an once in London after being freed in 1733 thanks to a letter in Arabic he wrote to his father asking to be redeemed. One copy, 223 pages long, has just surfaced (it was owned by a Californian since 1960) and was sold at auction on October 8 for $34,362.</p>
<p>In Georgia, Bilali Mohamed wrote, in Arabic, excerpts of an eleventh century Islamic text; and Brazilian Muslims operated underground Qur'anic schools. Sufism (the mystical side of Islam)was overwhelmingly present in West Africa and so too in the Americas where its influence can be seen in the Muslims' writings and practices.</p>
<p>Forgotten by the general public and, for the longest time, ignored by scholars, the Muslims are now the subject of several studies and the increasing interest in their story can be seen in the re-edition of three early books: <em>Prince Among Slave</em>s (1977 and 2007), <em>African Muslims in Antebellum America </em>(1984-1997) and <em>Servants of Allah</em> (1998-2013).</p>
<p> Terry Alford's <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16865807052907_prince_among_slaves" rel="nofollow"><em>Prince Among </em></a><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="226" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/alford.img_assist_custom.jpeg" title="" width="150" /></span><em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16865807052907_prince_among_slaves" rel="nofollow">Slaves</a> </em>retraces the life of Ibrahima abd al-Rahman, the son of the ruler of the theocracy of Futa Jallon in Guinea, who spent 39 years enslaved on a Mississippi plantation before sailing to Liberia.</p>
<p>In 1831, <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19073610052907_a_muslim_american_slave" rel="nofollow">Omar ibn Said</a>, a Senegalese teacher enslaved until his death in North Carolina wrote his autobiography in Arabic. It has been re-translated and commented in 2011 by Ala Alryyes. The 1854 <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16303618052907_the_biography_of_mahommah_gardo_baquaqua" rel="nofollow">Biography of Mahommah Baquaqua</a></em>, which follows him from Benin<span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="225" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/diouf15.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="150" /></span> to Brazil and to the U.S. has been annotated and contextualized by Paul Lovejoy and Robin Law. </p>
<p>Allan Austin's source book, <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/13040774052907_african_muslims_in_antebellum_america" rel="nofollow">African Muslims in Antebellum America,</a> </em>gathers historical documents about Muslims in the United States and Jamaica. Joao Jose Reis' s <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/11778121052907_slave_rebellion_in_brazil" rel="nofollow">Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia </a> </em>presents the largest slave uprising in Brazilian history.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/13887277052907_servants_of_allah" rel="nofollow">Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas</a> </em>details the religious, social, and cultural lives of individuals and communities in twenty countries in the Americas. As I discovered when researching this book, religions such as Vodun in Haiti; Candomble in Brazil; the <em>saraka</em> tradition in the Caribbean; and Palo Mayombe in Cuba have integrated Islam and the Muslims in their rituals. In the American South, enslaved women gave <em>saraka</em> (from the Arabic <em>sadaqa</em>, freewill offerings) to children in the form of rice cakes like their coreligionists continue to do in West Africa; and the early blues owes a lot to Islamic-influenced music and the call to prayer. </p>
<p>As enslaved men and women and as Muslims in Christian lands, the West African Muslims faced daunting obstacles to maintain and express their faith; but their story-recorded by themselves, slaveholders, travelers, and others-adds fascinating, detailed, unique and invaluable information to our understanding of the African experience in the Americas. </p>
<h4>To Learn More (primary sources)</h4>
<p><a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/omarsaid/omarsaid.html" rel="nofollow">Autobiography of Omar ibn Said<span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="183" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/austin.img_assist_custom.jpeg" title="" width="120" /></span></a></p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/11757910052907_biography_of_mahommah_g_baquaqua" rel="nofollow">Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua</a> also available <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/baquaqua/menu.html" rel="nofollow">online</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bv2dejulho.ba.gov.br/portal/index.php/exposicoes-virtuais/insurreicao-de-escravos-males.html" rel="nofollow">Original documents of the Muslim uprising in Bahia, Brazil</a></p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16897062052907_some_memoirs_of_the_life_of_job" rel="nofollow">Some Memoirs of the Life of Job</a> (Ayuba Suleyman Diallo) also <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bluett/menu.html" rel="nofollow">online</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.yorku.ca/nhp/shadd/kaba/index.asp" rel="nofollow">"The Arabic Manuscript of Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu of Jamaica, c. 1823"</a> </p>
<p><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/11781269052907_the_autobiography_of_nicholas_said" rel="nofollow">The Autobiography of Nicolas Said</a> (enslaved in the Middle East and Russia, migrated to the US and enrolled in the Union army) also available <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/said/said.html" rel="nofollow">online</a></p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.yorku.ca/nhp/shadd/baghdadi.pdf " rel="nofollow">The Foreigner's Amusement by Wonderful Things</a>" (Iraqi who visited the African Muslim communities of Brazil in 1865)</p>
Islamhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/10/13/americas-first-muslims#commentsSun, 13 Oct 2013 02:02:20 -0400Música Soul: The Soundtrack of the Black Power Movement in Brazilhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/03/m%C3%BAsica-soul-soundtrack-black-power-movement-brasil
Ann-Marie Nicholson<p><em>"If we had said 'Negro power' nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. If we said power for colored people, everybody would be for that, but it is the word 'black' that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine." —</em>Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at UC Berkeley, 1966</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-middle inline-middle"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/stokley_carmichael.inline vertical.jpg" alt="Stokely Carmichael by Lynn B. Padwe" title="Stokely Carmichael by Lynn B. Padwe" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="270" height="300" /><span class="caption caption caption">Stokely Carmichael by Lynn B. Padwe</span></span><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><a href="http://www.proibidao.org/funk-carioca-and-musica-soul/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/black-rio_almir-veiga_lena-frias_1976.inline vertical.jpg" alt="Black Rio Scene by Almir Veiga" title="Black Rio Scene by Almir Veiga" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="214" height="300" /></a><span class="caption caption caption">Black Rio Scene by Almir Veiga</span></span>James Brown released "I'm Black and I'm Proud" during the height of the Black Power Movement in the United States in 1968. Brown's in-your-face approach to racial pride resonated in the U.S. ghettos as well as the slums abroad. Many black people, all around the world, embraced the Black Power soundtrack and consciousness. Working-class black <em>cariocas </em>(residents of Rio) of Zona Norte began using the English phrases "Black Power," "brother" and "black is beautiful." They played African-American soul records at their <em>bailes </em>(dances) and incorporated the lyrics and sounds into their music.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7477245@N05/5168898211/sizes/l/in/photostream/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/5168898211_dec0a4315f_b.img_assist_custom.jpg" alt="By Luiz Fernando / Sonia Maria" title="By Luiz Fernando / Sonia Maria" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" width="100" height="139" /></a><span class="caption caption caption">By Luiz Fernando / Sonia Maria</span></span>Tim Maia, the godfather of <a href="http://www.proibidao.org/funk-carioca-and-musica-soul/" rel="nofollow"><em>música soul</em></a>, spent five years in the United States. He came to know the sounds of black America intimately. When he returned to Brazil in 1964, Maia incorporated the soul and funk influences into his songs. By the 1970s, other Brazilian musicians, such as Banda Black Rio, Cassiano, Gerson King Combo, Jorge Ben Jor and Gilberto Gil, began making soul records. DJs started throwing soul-only parties. This <em>nova</em> (new) music spoke to an experience—both universal and unique at the same time. The time period was known as "Black Rio" instead of the Portuguese equivalents: <em>negro</em> or <em>preto</em>. Organizations, such as Instituto de Pesquisa e Cultura Negra and Associação Cultural do Negro, met regularly to discuss racial politics and inequality. By the end of the '70s, funk and disco would take over where soul left off, but it was the latter that helped to shape a generation of artists around a universal black identity.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><a href="http://www.proibidao.org/funk-carioca-and-musica-soul/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/gerson-king-combo_stevie-wonder_rio_1972.inline vertical.jpg" alt="Gerson King Combo with Stevie Wonder in Rio de Janeiro, 1972" title="Gerson King Combo with Stevie Wonder in Rio de Janeiro, 1972" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="255" height="300" /></a><span class="caption caption caption">Gerson King Combo with Stevie Wonder in Rio de Janeiro, 1972</span></span>This signaled a break from the national Brazilian identity and the adoption of a revolutionary one—albeit via the African-American musical and cultural experience. This shift worried the military government, the secret police, the left and the right, and surprisingly many black journalists. The rejection of samba and the acceptance of a foreign music, style and vernacular were antithetical to the unifying image that Brazil projected. Or as Carlos Palombini, a Professor of Musicology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and a Fellow of the National Research Council, <a href="http://From Black Pride to Favela Pride by Carolos Palombini at Proibidao.org" rel="nofollow">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote><span>The soul-inspired sense of black pride among Brazilian musicians was liberating with respect to the history and the historiography of samba, which had disciplined their lives through the ideology of subaltern integration. By ‘history’ I mean the ways samba has been made permissible, profitable, acceptable, the ways it has been polished to transpose class barriers, to the point of becoming one of the most—if not the most—elaborate figure of national unity.</span><br /></blockquote>
<p>It didn't matter that the residents of Zona Sul—white—were adapting and mimicking the rock sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Palombini states that: "<span>In the first half of the decade, black musicians who paraded their blackness onstage—unwittingly perhaps, for the benefit of a regime that wished to project images of unbridled creativity—had their careers and lives shattered. [While] well-established white artists, of all stripes, went black without serious consequences."</span></p>
<p><span>Brazil was the last nation in the new world to abolish slavery, finally doing so in 1888. It passed the Afonso Arinos law in 1951, making racial discrimination a crime. However, racism didn't disappear. Segregation and discrimination were common in Brazil, but many said it was class instead of race since the symbols of national identity (samba and </span><em>feijoada</em><span>) came from Afro-Brazilian culture. Brazil had convinced itself—and its people—that it did not have a race problem.</span></p>
<p>In her essay, "<a href="http://hahr.dukejournals.org/content/89/1.toc" rel="nofollow">When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil</a>," Paulina Alberto notes that:</p>
<blockquote>Being <em>black </em>was culturally and politically different from being <em>preto</em> or <em>pardo</em>, the terms historically used to designate darker- or lighter-complexioned Brazilians of color; it was different, too, from <em>negro</em>, the word that many politically active people of color had adopted since the first decades of the century to designate a proudly unified racial group.</blockquote>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/12.thumbnail_square.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span>To be "black and proud" was both new and liberating. Carmichael took the word black—which the dominant race used as a pejorative—and made it endearing and liberating. It found its way not only to Brazil, but also across the Atlantic into the music and consciousness of young black people who did not speak English and had not witnessed the Civil Rights Movement up close and personal. Although identifying as black has lost the impact it once had here in the United States, it still resonates with those in other countries. Today, the young "<em>noirs</em>" of France refer to themselves as "black"—40 plus years after Stokely Carmichael delivered his groundbreaking speech at Berkeley.</p>
<h2>Related Resources</h2>
<h3>From our Catalog</h3>
<ul><li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16067953052907_tim_maia" rel="nofollow"><em>Tim Maia<br /></em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16067953052907_tim_maia" rel="nofollow"><em> </em></a><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S67?/dBlacks+--+Brazil+--+Music./dblacks+brazil+music/-3%2C-1%2C0%2CB/frameset&amp;FF=dblacks+brazil+music&amp;12%2C%2C12"><em>Rhythms of Resistance</em></a> by Peter Fryer</li>
<li><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1?/Xthe+unified+black+power+movement+in+brazil&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D/Xthe+unified+black+power+movement+in+brazil&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D&amp;SUBKEY=the+unified+black+power+movement+in+brazil/1%2C2%2C2%2CB/frameset&amp;FF=Xthe+unified+black+power+movement+in+brazil&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D&amp;1%2C1%2C"><em>The Unified Black Movement in Brazil, 1978-2002</em></a> by David Covin</li>
</ul><h3>Audio and Video</h3>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.afropop.org/wp/1836/brazilian-soul/" rel="nofollow"><em>Brazilian Soul</em></a> by Afro Pop Worldwide</li>
<li><a href="https://soundcloud.com/waxist-selecta/brasil-spins" rel="nofollow"><em>Brasil Spins</em></a> by Waxist</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAQJjY6Zxe8" rel="nofollow"><em>Onda</em></a> by Cassiano</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0s7qVLDiB4" rel="nofollow"><em>Réu Confesso</em></a> by Tim Maia</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPfShFjfpx4" rel="nofollow"><em>Mr. Funky Samba</em></a> by Banda Black Rio</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf6ZyR_BUJ0" rel="nofollow"><em>África Brasil</em></a> by Jorge Ben</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yozNoeqos9A" rel="nofollow"><em>Ilé Ayê</em></a> by Gilberto Gil</li>
</ul><h3>Articles</h3>
<ul><li><a href="http://www.proibidao.org/funk-carioca-and-musica-soul/" rel="nofollow"><em>Funk Carioca and Música Soul</em></a> by Carlos Palombini</li>
<li><a href="http://www.greatbrazilianmusic.com/soul.html" rel="nofollow"><em>Soul and Samba-Soul<br /></em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/chronicle/cache/bypass/home/archive/issues2007/thesolidarityofpeoples/pid/21708?pagination=true&amp;ctnscroll_articleContainerList=1_0&amp;ctnlistpagination_articleContainerList=true" rel="nofollow"><em>Racial Discrimination and Miscegenation: The Experience in Brazil</em></a> by Edward Telles</li>
<li><a href="http://hahr.dukejournals.org/content/89/1.toc" rel="nofollow"><em>When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil</em></a> by Paulina L. Alberto</li>
<li><a href="http://www.proibidao.org/from-black-pride-to-favela-pride/" rel="nofollow"><em>From Black Pride to Favela Pride</em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><span>by Carlos Palombini</span></li>
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<div><strong><a href="http://www.proibidao.org/" rel="nofollow"><br /></a></strong></div>
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<p> </p>Musichttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/03/m%C3%BAsica-soul-soundtrack-black-power-movement-brasil#commentsMon, 03 Jun 2013 04:04:37 -0400Asia's Africanshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/05/02/asias-africans
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><img style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/img_0244.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>May is <a href="http://asianpacificheritage.gov/" rel="nofollow">Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month</a>. What better time to discover or learn more about Afro-Asians? As our groundbreaking exhibition <a href="http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/31/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers">Africans in India</a> shows, some became navy commanders, army generals, and founders of dynasties. In Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, they left an impressive architectural legacy. Today, some Sidis live there in a small compound where they proudly maintain their culture.</p>
<p>When I entered the courtyard of the Sidis of Patthar Kuwa in the Old City of Ahmedabad, heart pounding excitingly, I found a quiet, welcoming oasis and I instantly felt at home. As I sat in her small living room, the first thing the matriarch, Rumanaben Siddi, said was "We are Muslims and Africans." I told her my father was African and Muslim too. When I added he was Senegalese, she was even more delighted. Some men from the compound had performed in Dakar as part of the Siddi Goma group—from <em>ngoma</em> a word derived from the Swahili meaning drum and dance. She introduced me to everyone as "our daughter from Dakar." With my few Hindi words gleaned watching Bollywood movies and the help of an Urdu-speaking friend, I made connections over geography, history, language and culture, and it was an emotional, quite magical moment.</p>
<p><img style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/img_0270_0.jpg" alt="" /> My Sidi hosts, like most Sidis (also called Habshis, from the Arabic for Abyssinia), were proud of their ethnic and religious identity. One Sidi song goes like this: <em>We are Habshis originally from Africa / we came to India to stay / we came with dates to trade / with the help of Bava Gor</em>. The Patthar Kuwa compound's shrine to the 14th-century African Muslim saint and agate trader Bava Gor, who settled in Gujarat, attests to this dual African/Islamic identity: it had big drums in the corner. The Sidis honor their saint with the vigorous devotional dancing and drumming for which they are famous.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><img style="float:right" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/img_0266_0.jpg" alt="" />The Sidis of Ahmedabad are virtually invisible in a city of 3.5 million. But if their present barely registers, their past is highly visible. The 16th-century graves of several African dignitaries can still be seen. One of the most celebrated mosques, built in 1461, bears the name of the Ethiopian Sidi Bashir. In 1570, <img style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/img_024.jpg" alt="" />Sidi Said, an erudite and pious Ethiopian royal slave who later joined a famous Ethiopian general, built a remarkable mosque. With its amazing stone carvings, Sidi Said Mosque is considered a masterpiece of Gujarati architecture. To touch its walls is a moving experience.</p>
<p>Both mosques are the top tourist destinations in the city. Unfortunately, few visitors know what Sidi refers to. A small washed out plaque mentions that Sidi Said was an Abyssinian but who, today, besides African Americans, is aware of what this obsolete term means?</p>
<p><img style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/sidis.jpg" alt="" />About 50,000 to 70,000 Sidis (whose ancestors originally came from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Lower Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique) are scattered across a country of 1.2 billion people. No wonder most Indians have never heard of them and sometimes mistake them for foreigners.</p>
<p>Because a large number of Sidis were employed at the royal courts of the independent princely states, when those were integrated into India after independence in 1947, they lost their jobs and their status. Today many are taxi drivers, domestics, pedlers, farmers and laborers while some belong to the middle class. Others, whose ancestors fled slavery in the Portuguese enclave of Goa and settled in remote areas, continued to live in small villages in the forests and mountains of Gujarat and Karnataka. In 2009, a few thousand of them came together to celebrate the first anniversary of Barack Obama's presidency. Beecause of the East African connection they consider him one of their own and wanted to send him a cask of honey made by their bees.</p>
<p><img style="float:right" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/2012-01-04_01.45.49.jpg" alt="" />The vast majority of Sidis are Muslims, a few are Christians or Hindus. The latter stand apart because they do not fit into the very strict Hindu caste system. Some Sidi settlements, organized as separate communities, have the status of "scheduled tribes," which offers a modicum of affirmative action programs. Depending on where they live, Sidis speak Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Konkani, or other local languages. Education, the need to maintain their distinctive culture and have a strong leadership are some of the priorities expressed by various Sidi groups.</p>
<p>J<img style="float:left" class="media-element file-default" src="http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/img_0253_0.jpg" alt="" />ust west of Gujarat, neighboring Pakistan is also home to African descendants, generally known there as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YByNHdqzUX0" rel="nofollow">Sheedis</a>. They live in the south, mostly in Baluchistan and Sindh. With their Iranian counterparts they form the largest group of African descendants in the region, with about 250,000 people along the Makran coast who can claim an African origin. Other Afro-Asian communities can be found in the Maldives (the place that provided all the cowry shells brought to Africa during the slave trade) and Sri Lanka. Their ancestors, free and enslaved, settled on these islands over the last eight centuries.</p>
<p>Touring South Asia on the footsteps of the Sidis of yesterday and today is an extraordinary, grandiose experience and a reminder that the African Diaspora stretches to the four corners of the globe. With <a href="http://thesidiproject.com/" rel="nofollow">The Sidi Project</a>, it is just a click away.</p>
<h3>More on the Afro-Asians of yesterday and today</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers">Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers</a>, a groundbreaking exhibition on view at the Schomburg Center through July 18.</p>
<h2>Online Exhibition</h2>
<p><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/">The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World</a></p>
<h2>Books</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16577605052_african_elites_in_india" rel="nofollow"><em>African Elites in India</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1/?searchtype=t&amp;searcharg=African+Identity+in+Asia%3A+Cultural+Effects+of+Forced+Migratio&amp;searchscope=1&amp;sortdropdown=-&amp;SORT=D&amp;extended=0&amp;SUBMIT=Search&amp;searchlimits=&amp;searchorigarg=tShaping+Membership%2C+Defining+Nation%3A+The+Cultural+Politics+of+African++Indi"><em>African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/13180523052_the_african_dispersal_in_the_deccan" rel="nofollow"><em>The African Dispersal in the Deccan</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1/?searchtype=t&amp;searcharg=Shaping+Membership%2C+Defining+Nation%3A+The+Cultural+Politics+of+African++Indi&amp;searchscope=1&amp;sortdropdown=-&amp;SORT=D&amp;extended=0&amp;SUBMIT=Search&amp;searchlimits=&amp;searchorigarg=aJayasuriya%2C+Shihan+de+Silva"><em>Shaping Membership, Defining Nation: The Cultural Politics of African Indians in South Asia</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/18443685052_sidis_and_scholars" rel="nofollow"><em>Sidis and Scholars</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/15619666052_the_african_diaspora_in_the_indian_ocean" rel="nofollow"><em>The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1?/Xmagic+saida&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D/Xmagic+saida&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D&amp;SUBKEY=magic+saida/1%2C3%2C3%2CB/frameset&amp;FF=Xmagic+saida&amp;searchscope=1&amp;SORT=D&amp;1%2C1%2C"><em>The Magic of Saida</em></a></li>
<li><a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1?/aJayasuriya%2C+Shihan+de+Silva/ajayasuriya+shihan+de+silva/-3%2C0%2C0%2CB/frameset&amp;FF=ajayasuriya+shihan+de+s&amp;5%2C%2C5/indexsort=-"><em>Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia</em></a></li>
</ul>http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/05/02/asias-africans#commentsThu, 02 May 2013 11:51:16 -0400Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulershttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/31/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" height="300" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/12_34_0.inline vertical.jpg" title="" width="218" /></span>Generals, commanders, admirals, prime ministers, and rulers, East Africans greatly distinguished themselves in India. They wrote a story unparalleled in the rest of the world — that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority not only in a foreign country but also on another continent. Come discover their extraordinary story in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Schomburg Center — on view from February 1 to July 6 — and on <strong>March 21</strong>, join Dr. Faeeza Jasdanwalla, <strong>a descendant of the African dynasty of Janjira</strong> for a conversation on this unique history.</p>
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<p>Following free traders and artisans who migrated to and traded with India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia in the fist centuries of the common era; from the 1300s onward, East Africans from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and adjacent areas entered the Indian subcontinent, mostly though the slave trade. Others came as soldiers and sailors. From Bengal in the northeast to Gujarat in the west and to the Deccan in Central India, they vigorously asserted themselves in the country of their enslavement. The success was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status. As foreigners and Muslims, some of these Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="196" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/7.32b__painting_of_mhd._khan.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="150" /></span>Besides appearing in written documents, East Africans, known as <em>Habshis</em> (Abyssinians) and<em> Sidis, </em>have been immortalized in the rich paintings of different eras, states, and styles that form an important part of Indian culture. <a href="http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers"><em>Africans in India</em></a> features dramatically stunning photographic reproductions of some of these paintings, as well as photographs.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="179" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/elephant.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="200" /></span>As rulers, city planners, and architects, the Sidis have left an impressive historical and architectural legacy that attest to their determination, skills, and intellectual, cultural, military and political savvy. The imposing forts, mosques, mausoleums, and other edifices they built — some more than 500 years ago — still grace the Indian landscape. They left their mark in the religious realm too. The 14th century African Muslim Sufi saint Bava Gor and his sister, Mai Misra, have devotees of all origins, not only in India, but also in Pakistan. Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Zoroastrians frequent their shrines.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="233" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/31a.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="150" /></span>From humble beginnings, some Africans carved out princely states — Janjira and Sachin — complete with their own coats of arms, armies, mints, and stamps. They fiercely defended them from powerful enemies well into the 20th century when, with another 600 princely states, they were integrated into the Indian State.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" height="238" src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/sidi_masud.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" width="200" /></span>To curate this exhibition with my friend Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins, renowned collector, expert in the history of the Africans in India and co-editor of <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/16577605052_african_elites_in_india" rel="nofollow">Africans Elites in India: Habshi Amarat</a></em>, was an old dream. It is also the continuation of an exploration of the eastern reaches of the African Diaspora started in 2011. The first leg of this journey was the online exhibition <em><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/">The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World</a></em>. Today, it has been seen in over 90 countries. The same year the Schomburg Center hosted, for several months, a gorgeous exhibition of quilts made by Sidi women. Curated by Dr. Henry Drewal, <em>Soulful Stitching </em>was an immense success.</p>
<p><em>Africans in India </em>presents a unique facet of the African experience in India, one that has not received, in the present, the recognition it deserves. By bringing out of obscurity the lives and accomplishments of some of the Sidis of yesterday, this new exhibition inscribes their fascinating story in the richly diverse history of the global African Diaspora.</p>
<p> </p>
<h4>For more, please visit</h4>
<p><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/">The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World</a></p>
<h4><a href="http://thesidiproject.com/" rel="nofollow">The Sidi Project</a></h4>
<p><a href="http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/05/02/asias-africans">Asia's Africans</a></p>
<h4><a href="http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/17/africans-india-then-and-now">Africans in India: Then and Now</a></h4>
<h4>Related Free Events</h4>
<p>March 21 at 6:30pm: <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/64/node/198604?lref=64%2Fnode%2F132394">Talks at the Schomburg</a>. Join our special guest Dr. Faaeza Jasdanwalla, a descendant of the African dynasty of Janjira, and Dr. Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod, editors of <em>African Elites in India </em>for a conversation on the history of Africans in India.</p>
<p>April 6 at 6:30: <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/64/node/200807?lref=64%2Fnode%2F132394">Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
Indian Religionshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/31/africans-india-slaves-generals-and-rulers#commentsMon, 11 Mar 2013 03:03:33 -0400Django Unchained: Lorraine Hansberry Unbridledhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/07/django-unchained
Christopher Moore<p>Angelic stranger, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) grants freedom to hapless Texas slave Django (Jamie Foxx). Schultz, a kindly German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, provides Django with employment, trusting friendship and his first handgun. Django is reborn as a slave-turned-bounty hunter, becoming a vengeful black American superman on a dangerous and deadly mission to free his lovely German-educated wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), from a Mississippi cotton plantation.</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/django_and_dr._king_schultz.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-_original" width="268" height="188" /></span><em>Django Unchained</em>, directed by <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Quentin Tarantino" rel="nofollow">Quentin Tarantino</a>, is a fascinating and troubling movie about slavery, freedom and violence in America. With a little extra viewer study, it could become an important film experience.</p>
<p>In 1858, Schultz and Django ride from Texas to Mississippi, collecting bodies and bounty checks, cash and promissory notes along the way.</p>
<p>"This is my world! And my world has gotten dirty," laments Schultz, after another bounty-winning bloodletting day.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/don_johnson_0.thumbnail_square.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span>Schultz and Django encounter plantation Big Daddy (Don Johnson) a charming slave-owner with added interest in constructing a destructive future Ku Klux Klan. Continuing to Mississippi, Schultz and Django arrive at a much larger plantation, Candie Land, owned by the very wealthy and sophisticated Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).<span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/birth_of_a_nation_0.img_assist_custom.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" width="100" height="154" /></span></p>
<p>Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a docile appearing house slave, serves slyly as Candie Land's ultimate overseer — a slave commander plus a decipherer of truth, goodness and evil — an authentic African Obeah (or Obi) transformed to an African-American monster. From 1858 to long beyond slavery, Stephen will live on in many American households, like any favorite uncle: Tom, Remus or Ben.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/broomhilda_stephen_0.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-_original" width="299" height="168" /></span><em>Django Unchained</em> is irreverently violent, often reproachfully racist and so much like D.W. Griffith's 1915 <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Birth Of A Nation griffith" rel="nofollow"><em>Birth Of A Nation</em></a>, the two films should ideally play back-to-back someday. Its lead character comes from the 1960s Italian film series, <em>Django</em>, starring Franco Nero, a gunman drifter who dragged a coffin on his violent journeys. <em>Django</em> replaced <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Sergio Leone" rel="nofollow">Sergio Leone</a>'s leading "man with no name" character (Clint Eastwood) as spaghetti Western box office favorite.</p>
<p>Laden more with schnitzel and beer than pasta, <em>Django Unchained</em> is influenced much by <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Karl May" rel="nofollow">Karl May</a>, the 19th century German novelist. May (pronounced My) wrote popular books about Germany's incremental spread into the global colonial world, including Asia, Africa and America, and German encounters with indigenous peoples. As a child, Germany's 20th century emerging artist-turned-Führer, Adolph Hitler, immensely enjoyed May's romantic conquest fantasies, in addition to trusting authentic historian accounts about the American expansion of the West, from sea to shining sea.<span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/clint_eastwood_0.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-_original" width="257" height="196" /></span></p>
<p>German production companies started <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Spaghetti Westerns" rel="nofollow">Spaghetti Westerns</a> in the late 1950s, filming Karl May-derived scripts in Italy as the surrogate American West. One powerfully repugnant scene may reawaken the late Fuhrer's delight and disgust, as a sadistically entertaining mandingo-canine mismatch nauseates the German, but not the more fearless Django, who then becomes Schultz's mentor.</p>
<p>"I am just a little more used to Americans than he (Schultz) is," intones Django, as he edges toward his very possible ancestral namesake, Shango (Xango), traditionally invoked by believers for male potency, fertility and war. More powerful than any handgun or rifle, Foxx's dynamite Django vaporizes Eastwood's charmingly destructive original.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/drinking_gourd.inline vertical.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="221" height="300" /></span>Samuel L. Jackson's superbly delivered Stephen reminded me of a favorite unpublished slavery screenplay, <em>The Drinking Gourd</em>, written by playwright <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Lorraine Hansberry" rel="nofollow">Lorraine Hansberry</a> in 1959. Commissioned by NBC as a teleplay, it was judged "superb" by one network official, but dropped, essentially because of Hansberry's firm storyline opinion that slavery was wrong. The Hansberry play contains a Stephen character, too, whom she named Coffin.</p>
<p>Her surnamed Hansberry grandparents were slaves from Mississippi. In an unpublished letter to the <em>Village Voice</em>, she connected the American slave experience with the Holocaust:</p>
<p>"I have long since learned that it is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald, they just dressed more attractively and their accents are softer," Hansberry wrote, adding, "The slavocracy was neither gentle nor vague; it was a system of absolutism: he who stood up and preached 'discontent' directly had his courageous head chopped off; his militant back flogged to shreds; the four points of his limbs fastened down to saplings, or his eyes gouged out."</p>
<p>Hansberry studied slavery from materials at The New York Public Library's <a href="/locations/schomburg" rel="nofollow">Schomburg Center</a> for the television project.</p>
<p>I have not spoken to Tarantino but his interview by <em><a href="http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/tarantino-talks-gates-podcast-special" rel="nofollow">The Root</a></em>'s editor-in-chief Henry Louis Gates offers important insights into his cinematic mission.</p>
<p>"I think America is one of the only countries that has not been forced, sometimes by the rest of the world, to look their own past sins completely in the face," Tarantino said.</p>
<p><a href="http://npgportraits.si.edu/eMuseumNPG/code/emuseum.asp?rawsearch=ObjectID/,/is/,/93273/,/false/,/false&amp;newprofile=CAP&amp;newstyle=single" rel="nofollow"><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/schomburg_national_georgraphic_scars.inline vertical.jpg" alt="Gordon by Mathew Brady Studio, active 1844-1894, National Portrait Gallery" title="Gordon by Mathew Brady Studio, active 1844-1894, National Portrait Gallery" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="189" height="300" /><span class="caption caption caption">Gordon by Mathew Brady Studio, active 1844-1894, National Portrait Gallery</span></span></a>"And it's only by looking them in the face that you can possibly work past them."</p>
<p>Great Americans named Douglass, DuBois, Wells, Bethune, King, X (Shabazz), Baldwin and Hansberry fundamentally argued that America's ugliest disfiguring was the self-castration of its own humane ideals.</p>
<p>Likely, Dr. King and Malcolm X would be with Spike Lee and Tarantino, in part, on this film. In his autobiography, Malcolm X expressed an unnamed partnership on the root cause and outcome of generations of fanciful national history:</p>
<p>"When the white man came into this country, he certainly wasn't demonstrating any 'non-violence.' In fact, the very man (Dr. King) whose name symbolizes non-violence here today has stated: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy.</p>
<p>We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.</p>
<p><a href="http://digital.nypl.org/lwf/english/site/flash.html"><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/schomburg_lest_we_forget_exhibition_2000_0.inline vertical.jpg" alt=" The Triumph Over Slavery" title=" The Triumph Over Slavery" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="300" height="227" /><span class="caption caption caption">Lest We Forget: The Triumph Over Slavery</span></span></a>Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it... It was upon this massive base of racism that the prejudice toward the nonwhite was readily built, and found rapid growth. This long-standing racist ideology has corrupted and diminished our democratic ideals. It is this tangled web of prejudice from which many Americans now seek to liberate themselves, without realizing how deeply it has been woven into their consciousness."</p>
<p>[From <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley" rel="nofollow"><em>Autobiography of Malcolm X, As Told To Alex Haley</em></a>, by Malcolm X, 1965 / MLK Jr. excerpt from <a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Why We Can&#039;t Wait martin luther king" rel="nofollow"><em>Why We Can't Wait</em></a>, by Martin Luther King Jr., 1964]</p>
<p>In 1960, American star Henry Fonda agreed to plans for the <em>The Drinking Gourd</em> and negotiations with Claudia McNeal and British star Laurence Olivier were underway when NBC abruptly passed on the script. In 1967, radio station WBAI commemorated the second anniversary of Hansberry's death, broadcasting two scenes from the script, voiced by Cicely Tyson, Will Geer, James Earl Jones and Rip Torn.</p>
<p>When my Moore family arrived at the Manhattan movie theatre, my sixth grade son passed up the opportunity to see <em>Django Unchained</em> with his twelfth grade brother, mother and me. Instead he went with his aunt Imani to see <em>The Hobbit</em>.</p>
<p>"You all look exhausted!" my younger son exclaimed as we walked wearily toward him after the movie. We were tired of all the killing. Make-believe killing is tiring, even in an important and valuable film. My wife, Kim Yancey, who introduced me to Lorraine Hansberry's works, liked the performances but she was just plain tired by the violence. My older son unequivocally enjoyed the movie, but he was weary, too (thankfully!) from the so lengthy killing stretches. He is a video production intern and he is learning that movies are never the last stop in the learning curve, but can be the first step. We have a few books at home and I figured a trip to the library would help translate <em>Django Unchained</em> from a potential waste of family time.</p>
<p>Spielberg's <a href="http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/12/04/lincoln-review"><em>Lincoln</em></a> cinematically constructs the Thirteenth Amendment. Many viewers may see that Tarantino's <em>Django Unchained</em> deconstructs the Second Amendment. <em>Django Unchained</em> is Historical Literacy 101 (with or without popcorn). Syllabus: Hansberry, Malcolm X, MLK Jr.</p>
<p>For more information:</p>
<ul><li><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers" rel="nofollow"><em>The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry including Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers</em></a>, New American Library, 1983.</li>
<li><em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Spaghetti Westerns frayling" rel="nofollow">Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone</a></em>, by Christopher Frayling</li>
<li><em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Jubilee The Emergence of African American Culture" rel="nofollow">Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture</a>,</em> New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Publication, National Geographic 2005.</li>
</ul><p>Chris Moore is author <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Fighting For America Black Soldiers unsung" rel="nofollow">Fighting For America: Black Soldiers, The Unsung Heroes of World War II</a> </em>and co-author <em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Standing In The Need of Prayer celebration black" rel="nofollow">Standing In The Need of Prayer: A Celebration of Black Prayer</a> </em>and <em><em><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=smart&amp;search_category=keyword&amp;q=Jubilee The Emergence of African American Culture" rel="nofollow">Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture</a></em>.</em></p>Broadcasting, Radio and Televisionhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/07/django-unchained#commentsTue, 08 Jan 2013 11:11:42 -0500Manhattan Woman and 20,000 Slaveshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/12/21/manhattan-woman-and-20000-slaves
Christopher Moore<p><a href="/milstein" rel="nofollow">Genealogical</a> Ties That Bind.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/slide1_0.inline vertical.jpg" alt="African Burial Ground Map Overlay" title="African Burial Ground Map Overlay" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="300" height="225" /><span class="caption caption caption">African Burial Ground Map Overlay</span></span>We met at the Chambers Street IRT subway station — Lynn Jencks, descendant of an early Dutch family, and me, descendant of Lenape, Dutch and Africans. About 400 years ago, Dutch and enslaved Africans arrived into the ancient Algonquian wilderness that became New York City. Lynn, who lives in Illinois, had never been to the property owned by her ancestors and worked upon by slaves.</p>
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<p>"Christopher guided me out of the subway and we emerged into the crisp clear December air," Lynn wrote in an email account of our walk. "We walked a short distance to Duane Park, a tiny triangle of green at the intersection of Hudson and Duane Streets."</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/new_am_kinderen_boeck_collegiate_church.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="Book of Baptisms and Marriages 1639-1730 Archives of The Collegiate Church of NY" title="Book of Baptisms and Marriages 1639-1730 Archives of The Collegiate Church of NY" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /><span class="caption caption caption">Book of Baptisms and Marriages 1639-1730 Archives of The Collegiate Church of NY</span></span>The park is part of the Domine (Minister's) Farm, once owned by <a href="http://www.collegiatechurch.org/" rel="nofollow">Protestant</a> Dutch Rev. Everardus Bogardus and his wife, Anneke Jans. Rev. Bogardus is notable among colonial Christian ministers, as he opposed the relentless wars against the natives, supported education of black children and performed marriages and baptisms of free and enslaved blacks. Lynn's ancestors and a few of my own are registered in the Kinderboek, one of our city's oldest documents.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/lynn_jencks_at_duane_park.square.jpg" alt="Duane Park at West Broadway" title="Duane Park at West Broadway" class="image image image-square" width="150" height="150" /><span class="caption caption caption">Duane Park at West Broadway</span></span>Duane Park is the city's oldest American park, founded in 1797 (Bowling Green is older but it was created during the English reign — 1733) elicited Lynn's biggest smiles of the day.</p>
<p>"It is the last little sliver of my ancestors' farm that remains, somehow escaping 400 years of development," Lynn explained.</p>
<p>From Duane Park we walked east along Chambers Street, where once stood an island-wide slave-constructed wall from the Hudson to the East River, much wider than the more famous Wall constructed by enslaved laborers at Wall Street in 1653.</p>
<p>At Broadway, we reached the 6.6 acre property, once owned by Lynn's 17th century great aunt, Sarah Roloff Kiersted Van Borsum, step-daughter of Rev. Bogardus.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/slide1_3.inline vertical.jpg" alt="African Burial Ground National Memorial" title="African Burial Ground National Memorial" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="300" height="225" /><span class="caption caption caption">African Burial Ground National Memorial</span></span>"As an adult, Sarah (some sort of great-aunt to me) befriended the Native Americans, with whom the Dutch colonists were at frequent war and whom the Dutch eventually expelled from the territory," stated Lynn.</p>
<p>In 1669, Sarah received a 2260-acre land grant in New Jersey (Bogata and Teaneck) from Lenape-Hackensack Chief Oratamy. During the brief Dutch return to power (July 1673 – November 1674) Sarah received the burial ground property from Petrus Stuvesant, for her role as an Indian translator. Sometime after that grant, it became used for African burials.</p>
<p>"Sara gave permission to the enslaved Africans to bury their dead on her property. Within a few decades, this area was named on a map as the 'Negro Burial Ground,' eventually containing the graves of an estimated 15,000-20,000 Africans by the time it closed at the end of the 18th century," wrote Lynn.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/slide1_1.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="African Burial Ground Caskets in 2003" title="African Burial Ground Caskets in 2003" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /><span class="caption caption caption">African Burial Ground Caskets in 2003</span></span>Unearthed during construction of a 34 story federal office building at 290 Broadway in 1991, the cemetery became a NYC landmark in 1993 and a National Monument in 2007. Four hundred and nineteen burial remains were reburied in individual wooden coffins in seven mounds at the memorial site.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images/slide1_2.inline vertical.jpg" alt="African Burial Ground Mounds" title="African Burial Ground Mounds" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" width="300" height="225" /><span class="caption caption caption">African Burial Ground Mounds</span></span>"Christopher brought me here, and as I stood in that place, I had an overwhelming sense of something coming full circle. I was intensely aware of the connection between my ancestors, on whose land this burial ground had begun, and of Christopher's, whose ancestors' community had buried their dead here."</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm" rel="nofollow">African Burial Ground National Monument Visitor Center</a> is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and is closed on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day. The African Burial Ground National Memorial is open every day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. except Christmas Day and Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Lynn Jencks is a Doctoral Candidate in Theology and Religion at Northwestern University.</p>
<p>Chris Moore is Senior Researcher and co-author of <em>The Black New Yorkers: 400 Years of African American History and Standing In The Need Of Prayer: A Celebration of Black Prayer</em> and a member of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.<span> <br /></span></p>
<p>For additional resources, visit the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg/general-research-and-reference-division/schomburg/general-research-and-reference-division">Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture</a>.</p>African American Studieshttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/12/21/manhattan-woman-and-20000-slaves#commentsFri, 21 Dec 2012 11:11:12 -0500Clicks to the Black Worldhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/10/04/clicks-to-the-black-world
Sylviane Diouf, Director, Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" src="/sites/default/files/images/digital003.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" height="109" width="100" /></span>Digital Schomburg's online exhibitions on various aspects of the black experience have truly become a global phenomenon. They are attracting visitors from all over the world. From Argentina to Zimbabwe and Montenegro and the Maldives in between. What do they know that perhaps you don't?</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" src="/sites/default/files/images/digital4.php_.img_assist_custom.txt" title="" height="167" width="120" /></span><em><a href="http://www.inmotionaame.org" rel="nofollow">In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience</a></em> remains the most visited curated exhibition of The New York Public Library. With a few clicks, visitors from 206 countries and territories, including Kazakhstan, Tonga, Suriname, Mongolia and Malawi, continue to explore its 16,000 pages of texts (392 books, book chapters, and articles) 8,300 illustrations, 67 maps and 100 lesson plans. <em>In Motion </em>offers a new interpretation of African-American history that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. In 13 defining movements this exhibition documents 400 years of migration to, within and out of the United States. From the move West to the Return South; from the Great Migration to the contemporary Caribbean and African immigration; from Haitians in Louisiana to African Americans in Liberia, <em>In Motion</em> maps out dynamic journeys of hope.</p>
<p><a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/"><span class="inline inline inline-right inline-right"><img alt="" class="image image image-img_assist_custom" src="/sites/default/files/images/digital3.img_assist_custom.jpg" title="" height="195" width="130" /></span><em>Africana Age: African &amp; Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century</em></a> takes an in-depth look at the social, political, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the 20th century and paved the way for major positive developments in the post-colonial, post-segregation, post-apartheid first decade of the 21st century.</p>
<p>It has been viewed in 153 countries. Topics such as African Resistance to Colonization, African Americans and World War I, Black Power and Pan-Africanism, have found readers not only throughout the Black World but also in Myanmar, Indonesia, New Zealand, Brunei and Fiji. But it is the essay "The Colonization of Africa" that has been a surprise hit. It is the most visited single page of The New York Public Library’s online exhibitions.</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image image-inline image-inline vertical vertical" src="/sites/default/files/images/12_34.inline vertical.jpg" title="" height="300" width="218" /></span>African dynasties in India? 1.5 to 2 million African descendants in Iraq? Afro-Pakistani culture? There is much more to discover in <em> <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/">The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World</a></em>. From Arabia and Iran to India and Sri Lanka, this exhibition maps out a truly unique and fascinating story of struggles and achievements across a variety of societies, cultures, religions, languages and times. It has attracted curious minds in India, Pakistan, Yemen and Oman as could be expected but moreover it has reached 87 countries as diverse as Greece, Finland, Israel, Ukraine, and Argentina.</p>
<p>Informative essays by renowned scholars experts in their fields; unique documents and illustrations from the rich collections of the Center; easy navigation and attractive design have made the Schomburg’s online exhibitions an international success.</p>
<p>What the numbers and the reach tell us is that knowledge about African and African Diasporan history and culture is in great demand the world over and Digital Schomburg's online exhibitions are at the vanguard in its dissemination.</p>
<p>See for yourself! Come and discover these and other exhibitions. Visit <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/64/online_exhibitions">Online Exhibitions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/64/node/65914">Digital Schomburg</a> is more than exhibitions. It offers access to books, audio-visual resources, back issues of our newsletter, and selected links to high-quality sites, and large databases of books, articles, oral histories, images, maps, interviews, and television programs.</p>
Africahttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/10/04/clicks-to-the-black-world#commentsThu, 04 Oct 2012 11:28:42 -0400Reclaiming My West Indian Roots, with Poetryhttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/04/24/reclaiming-my-west-indian-roots-poetry
Ann-Marie Nicholson<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/29bennett_190.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span>As a young girl growing up in Jamaica — and later in Brooklyn, NY — I often heard the poetry of <a href="http://www.louisebennett.com" rel="nofollow">Louise Bennett</a> (Jamaicans affectionately call her "Miss Lou") permeate the air. One of my earliest recollections of Miss Lou’s lyricism was hearing the term <em>mout amassi </em>(big mouth). The term comes from the title of one of her <a href="http://louisebennett.com/newsdetails.asp?NewsID=9" rel="nofollow">most popular poems</a> about a young lady, Liza, who loves to gossip and chat.</p>
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<p>To be called a "mout amassi" was far from a compliment and the nickname could follow one around for a lifetime. Adults used it on adults and children alike. Children used it on each other, often eliciting uncontrollable laughter.</p>
<p>I have more fond memories of how Miss Lou’s poetry reverberated throughout my youth and the many phrases that I—as well as my fellow islanders—eagerly adapted to tease as well as to assert my identity.</p>
<p>Many years removed from my childhood, it would take a long time before I returned to my roots. It wasn’t until I was in grad school getting my master’s in English Literature, with a focus on postcolonial literature, that I ventured beyond the poetry of the Romantics and the Harlem Renaissance. In one of my classes, Caribbean Literature, my professor further exposed me to Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanaphone writers and poets, like: Derek Walcott, Olive Senior, Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, and Reinaldo Arenas. The lyricism of these poets — from varied backgrounds and languages — spoke to me and my cultural identity. I realized, albeit not too late, that the reason these poets resonated with me was because I had never really forgotten my roots — they just needed to be watered and restored.</p>
<p>Below are a few West Indian poets whose works capture and transcend their shared cultural heritage:</p>
<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/filederek_walcott.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108204191_derek_walcott" rel="nofollow">Derek Walcott</a></strong>, born in 1930, is from <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Saint+Lucia&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;hnear=St+Lucia&amp;gl=us&amp;t=m&amp;z=10" rel="nofollow">Saint Lucia</a>. He won the <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/" rel="nofollow">Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992</a> for his epic poem, <em>Omeros</em> — based on Homer’s <em>The Iliad</em> and <em>The Odyssey</em>. Walcott is currently a professor of poetry at the University of Essex. </p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/kamau_brathwaite.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108204383_kamau_brathwaite" rel="nofollow">Kamau Brathwaite</a> </strong>was born in Barbados in 1930. He is currently a Professor of Comparative Literature at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_University" title="New York University" rel="nofollow">New York University</a>.</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/images_2.thumbnail_square.jpeg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108205321_martin_carter" rel="nofollow">Martin Carter</a> </strong>(d. 1997) was a Guyanese poet, whose work came to <span>symbolize</span> post-colonial nationalism.</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/gracenichols.thumbnail_square.png" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108205474_grace_nichols" rel="nofollow">Grace Nichols</a></strong> was born in Guyana. Grace Nichols lives in England with the poet John Agard and their daughter Kalera. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/grace-nichols-even-tho/1365.html" rel="nofollow">Watch her talk about one of her poems on bbc.co.uk</a>.</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/johnagard.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108205981_john_agard" rel="nofollow">John Agard</a> </strong>was born in Guyana and currently resides in England.</p>
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<p><span class="inline inline inline-left inline-left"><img src="http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/455_1999_18_olive_se.thumbnail_square.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image image-thumbnail_square" width="100" height="100" /></span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/list/show/87525574_nypl_schomburg_center/108206251_olive_senior" rel="nofollow">Olive Senior</a></strong> was born in Jamaica. She currently resides in Toronto, Canada.</p>Caribbean literaturehttp://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/04/24/reclaiming-my-west-indian-roots-poetry#commentsTue, 24 Apr 2012 16:53:14 -0400